


it'll all work out

by juicedbeetles



Category: Supernatural, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dean Hates Witches, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, Human Impala, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 02:51:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10067210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juicedbeetles/pseuds/juicedbeetles
Summary: A homicidal omega is wreaking havoc in Beacon Hills.Or, the one where Dean pisses off a teenage witch, and Stiles is bait (yet again).





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maniseonmul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maniseonmul/gifts).



> A /long/ overdue Dean/Baby (human!Impala) fic for soulmate. Much trope. Such cliche. There's Dean/Cas if you squint (honestly, the whole thing is basically an analogy for Dean/Cas's deal lbr).
> 
> It follows canon up to and including S3 of TW (minus the Malia thing, and, quite unintentionally, Kira). Canon up to and including S5 of SPN (minus Sam coming out of the cage all fucked up and soulless, and the whole domestic!Dean thing). So Sam and Dean are still pretty young, age wise. Baby is roughly between 24 and 26, and is essentially based on a young(er) Chris Pine (in terms of physical appearance).
> 
> Title is a Tom Petty song.

 

Though I'm here in this far off place  
My air is not this time and space  
I draw you close with every breath  
you don't know it's right until it's wrong  
You don't know it's yours until it's gone  
I didn't know that it was home ‘til you up and left  
_Come and Find Me Now_ by Josh Ritter

* * *

 

  
  
**0.0**  
They’ve been driving for too long again. The laptop perched on Sam’s lap gets jostled as he shifts his legs in an attempt to stretch them out.  
  
Sam looks up, says, “Next exit.”  
  
Dean takes the next exit. “So what’s this town called again?”  
  
“Beacon Hills. Population barely over a couple thousand. Unusually high concentration of supernatural phenomena, thanks to the Nemeton at its center. It’s kinda like the Hellmouth in Buffy. Only real. Like a supernatural beacon,” Sam adds when Dean glances at him.  
  
“I fucking hate California, man. Witches. All the fucking witches. Tell me this ain’t witches, Sam.”  
  
“Seems like it might be a werewolf. It’s been appearing and disappearing around Beacon County for months. Especially around Beacon Hills.”  
  
  
**1.0**  
“What I wanna know is why this ‘unidentified animal’ has been sighted most frequently in the middle of the fucking woods, where, it stands to reason, normal people won’t set foot at three in the morning,” Dean says. He hefts his shotgun over his shoulder. It’s got rock salt shells which won’t do shit if it is a werewolf, but it’ll hurt. There’s a knife tucked into a sheath in his boot, too. And Sam’s got a gun with wolfsbane bullets.  
  
A little something-something they picked up a couple of years back.  
  
Dean won’t be surprised if this turns out to be some elaborate hellspawn trap, though. Ever since they crammed Lucifer back into his cage and Crowley’s taken over as King of Hell, demons are even less happy to see the Winchesters. Who would’ve thought.  
  
Dean offers Madison a single, crackling thought. They don’t deal with werewolves often. But when they do, Dean offers Madison a single second. They say people remembering is what keeps the memory of the dead alive. It’s not like her family knows the truth.  
  
“Probably just kids,” Sam says. “You know, sneaking out to drink and be merry.”  
  
“And this werewolf just… doesn’t kill ‘em and eat their liver?”  
  
“Yeah, it doesn’t add up to me either.” Sam kicks away a branch, swinging his flashlight. “Maybe the Sheriff can shed some light on it.”  
  
“‘Cause the locals are always so helpful with this stuff. Remember that time I almost got sacrificed to some Norse god of apple orchards? Or the time we almost got eaten by Bad Santa? Or what about ghost sickness? Or—“  
  
“Okay, yeah, I get it.”  
  
A voice reaches them from a distance. Dean comes to a full stop, glancing at Sam. Dean throws his head in the direction of the voice and Sam nods in response.  
  
“—Lyds, c’mon, share the love, share the knowledge; let me borrow your notes.”  
  
“ _Fucking kids_ ,” Dean says under his breath. He kills his flashlight before continuing forward, slower and quieter.  
  
“Nah, I’m about ten-fifteen minutes out. You worried the Hook Man’s gonna come get you? Shut up, it’s a classic, and I’m hilarious.” The kid pauses as he says it, looks around like he spooked himself. He holds the phone away from his ear, mini-flashlight bobbing slightly in the dark. For a moment, his attention goes straight to where Dean and Sam are crouching.  
  
They’re half-hidden by a slope, the trunks of a few trees. Thankfully, the kid doesn’t shine his light towards them. “Just thought I heard something,” he says into the phone. He starts walking again.  
  
Dean and Sam follow, continuing to eavesdrop. If nothing else, they can keep the kid from potentially getting mauled. None of Dean’s Spidey senses are tingling; he doubts this is the werewolf they’re looking for.  
  
“—I don’t think I’ll be able to make it,” the kid says. His pace increases by a fraction. “Yeah, that’d be great. No, doubt it, doesn’t feel like it. Dude, when am I not careful. Yeah, I’ll see you soon.” The kid slips his phone into his back pocket. He does a graceless little spin, a three-hundred-sixty of his surroundings, stops short.  
  
The kid throws his mini-flashlight up into the air, and instead of following the laws of gravity, it simply continues to rise above the tree tops. It hovers, growing larger and darker, briefly shining a deep, vermillion red against the nearly full moon before blinking out.  
  
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Dean grumbles, shouldering the shotgun and slipping his knife from its sheath. He turns to Sam, says, “You said this wasn’t gonna be witches!”  
  
Still crouching, Dean makes his way up the slope, keeping a decent distance from the kid; he’s still standing exactly where he was before his little fireworks show, only now he’s back on his phone, nonchalantly typing away. He’s either stupid, or Sam and Dean are gonna be dead within the next five minutes.  
  
Sam moves off in the opposite direction of Dean to create a distraction.  
  
As it turns out, the kid is stupid and is enough of a distraction all by himself. Dean sneaks up from behind and pulls the kid’s arm behind his back, forcing the phone to drop to the floor. It leaves Dean with the perfect leverage to put a knife to the kid’s pale throat.  
  
Sam reappears seconds later, fixing the gun on the kid. It’s not aimed at the kid’s head or heart, Dean notices, more toward the shoulder. The caliber isn’t enough to punch through, so it’s not about Sam being worried about hitting Dean, too, if shit hits the fan.  
  
The kid’s holding up his free hand, saying, “Wait, wait, wait,” with his head tilted back, leaving his voice slightly strangled. His entire body is tensed up, and judging by the way Sam lowers his gun, the kid’s face must be the picture-perfect rendition of _about to shit my pants_. “I can explain!” The kid says, waving his hand. Dean let’s up on the knife a little.  
  
“Explain what?” Sam asks, moving closer with narrowed eyes.  
  
“Why you’ve been killing people and stealing their body parts?” Dean interrupts before the kid can say anything.  
  
“I’m not into organ harvesting, I’m not a cannibal, and I’m not the one who’s killing people around here. So could you just slow your roll there, buddy, and maybe let me go, and I’ll tell you whatever you want.”  
  
Dean looks at Sam over the kid’s shoulder. Sam lowers his gun, but he doesn’t put it away. Dean’s loosening his grip on the kid’s wrist when Sam’s eyes flick to the side.  
  
“ _Dean!_ ”  
  
It’s pure instinct: Dean tightens his grip on the kid, and walks them both backwards until Dean’s back hits the thick trunk of a tree. It'll offer some kind of protection, at least. The blade of the knife presses against the kid’s throat. The repressed choke the kid makes is a satisfying indicator the blade has nicked through skin. That’s when the growls start to filter in, deep and low, not from one throat but several. From side and front. Sam moves to Dean’s side, positioning himself at an angle.  
  
A pair of red eyes come through the uneasy darkness of the thick forest, and two pairs of golden eyes flank them. Three fully wolfed-out werewolves; an alpha and two betas, all with their teeth bared. If these are the ‘wolves they’re looking for, there’s a good chance Sam and Dean are going to be puppy chow by the end of tonight.  
  
Dean isn’t keen on reliving that particular experience. Once was more than enough.  
  
“You make on wrong fucking move, and I’ll slit his throat,” Dean says when a messy, blonde beta advances. Instead of tensing further, the kid relaxes, if only by a fraction. The alpha reaches out, pulling the beta back in by the proverbial scruff of her neck.  
  
Wait, are they _all_ fucking teenagers?  
  
“Dean,” Sam says. His tone is somewhere between incredulous and surprised. Fast on the uptake. Sam doesn’t lower his gun this time, though.  
  
“Let him go,” the alpha growls. It’s made less menacing by the slight lisp the fangs cause. Then again: fangs and claws? Are kind of inherently menacing, seasoned hunter or not.  
  
“Are you the werewolves killing people?” Sam asks.  
  
Dean tightens his grip when the kid shifts again. The blade digs a little deeper this time. The black beta growls in response. The blonde one turns to the alpha and says, “ _Hunters_ ” so low Sam barely catches it.  
  
“Scott,” the kid says, making a gesture with his hand around hip height. “Don’t move,” Dean warns. Being a witch won’t do you much good with a slit throat.”  
  
“We’re not the ones you’re looking for.” The alpha holds his palms open at his sides, taking a single step closer. He leaves his betas standing behind him like sentinels. “We don’t hunt humans, or anybody else. We’re a pack. The one that’s killing people—it’s an omega. We’ve been tracking it for weeks. This is our territory, and we will handle it ourselves. This is none of your business. Let Stiles go, and we’ll forget about it.” The alpha holds up a hand; his claws have retracted but his face remains shifted. “We don’t want a fight, but you’re in our territory, and we don’t take kindly to hostile hunters. Especially not those who threaten our pack.”  
  
Dean isn’t sure if he imagines it, but he could swear he sees the kid—Stiles?—give the alpha a swift thumbs up.  
  
Sam turns to Dean, just enough to meet his eyes in the low light from the moon without losing track of the ‘wolves’. They haven’t got much of a choice, at least for now.  
  
“Not to escalate the situation further,” Stiles says. “But I can still drop both of you with a hand behind my back and a knife to my throat. If you decide to keep being assholes, anyway. Just saying.”  
  
The blonde rolls her eyes. Dean's inclined to agree. It sounds like false bravado. Then again, he’s learnt not to underestimate people over the last three, four years.  
  
“We’re just gonna do this on good faith?” Dean asks.  
  
“We’re not the ones holding a knife to your throats. And you’re the ones trespassing. Good faith’s all you have,” the alpha says.  
  
Dean let’s Stiles go. “I fucking hate witches.”  
  
“Feeling’s mutual,” Stiles replies, covering the cut on his neck with his hand.  
  
None of the ‘wolves shift back to human. The alpha gets close enough for Sam and Dean to get a good look at him; they’re not likely to recognize him as human. He’s clearly a high-schooler, though. He’s even got his hands shoved into his front pockets, now. “Consider this a warning.”  
  
The alpha puts a hand on the back of Stiles’s neck, and the four of them walk away.  
  
“This isn’t over, is it?” Sam says, resigned, once they’re reasonably far away enough to not be overheard.  
  
“Is it ever?” Dean grunts.  
  
  
**1.5**  
Stiles likes this. He doesn't get to do it much anymore, bring Dad lunch on a Saturday. There's never a dull moment, and Stiles is going away to college soon, after all. Although Berkley isn't _that_ far away, it's not a greasy Sunday brunch at The Mulch close, either. Which is an absurd name for a diner, even one in Beacon Hills, but it's been a staple since long before Stiles's birth.  
  
Ever since he was little, it's been the one place they've frequented over all else on lazy weekend days. Mom always used to order strawberry pancakes, no matter what day or hour it was. Even when the strawberries were soggy and out of season, more water than fruit.  
  
Because he's nice, and loves his dad, Stiles has bought the best, most decadent hamburgers (with curly fries) The Mulch has to offer. He's also feeling a little (a lot) guilty for never being home this last year.  
  
So Dad deserves a treat. For putting up with Stiles in general, really.  
  
Stiles is only using a teensy-tiny bit of magic to keep his take-out tower of Pisa from toppling over. It nearly topples anyway when a trench-coated guy with a sourpuss for a face narrowly rams into it. He doesn't even apologize. Stiles considers using his powers for evil. Instead, because he's the bigger man, he grumbles an 'asshole' under his breath. It wouldn't look good to incite crime right outside the Sheriff's station, anyway  
  
"Yo, Deputy G," Stiles says, rebalancing the containers. He nods his head at Deputy Gomez. "Buzz me in?"  
  
"The Sheriff's meeting with the FBI, so you'll have to wait, I'm afraid.” She tries in vain to hide her amusement when Stiles loses his concentration and almost topples the containers a second time.  
  
"FBI? As in Agent McCall, or?" Stiles sections off the containers into three smaller towers on the counter. "Bribe you with some curly fries?"  
  
"Nice try, Stiles." Deputy Gomez leans back slightly, looking through the slits of the blinds. "Looks like you're in luck, though. No bribes needed."  
  
The door into the pit is ajar, and Stiles's fears are confirmed almost as fast as they arrive. He knows he's in deep shit when hearing Agent McCalls's voice would've been like a choir of angels. Instead, it's another voice he recognizes: one of the hunters, Dean. The one who gave him the cut on his throat last night, the cut Stiles is currently glamoring so Dad won't worry.  
  
He hadn't bothered glamoring it around the pack once they'd reached Derek's loft. He wished he'd had when Erica noticed and cooed at him like he was an injured baby bird. Surpassed only by Derek working himself into a fit over the hunters. Then Stiles and Derek had a loud albeit short argument about how Stiles was a vulnerable slab of meat.  
  
Stiles left the loft angry, and passive-aggressively cloaked his scent from Derek.  
  
"If you think of anything else, we'll be staying at the Rey Light motel just outside town," the other hunter, Sam, says.  
  
_Shit, fuck, mother—_  
  
Panic crawls up Stiles's throat like cockroaches. They'll no doubt recognize him. And, if by some miracle they don't, Dad's no doubt going to do something stupid like say his name. Or Deputy Gomez might. He could try a basic glamor, hope the hunters didn't get a good look at him last night. Also ignoring the fact he'd be doing it in broad daylight. In front of Deputy Gomez whom, Stiles is pretty sure, is not aware of the supernatural side of Beacon Hills. She'll probably get a little freaked out if Stiles suddenly doesn't look much like himself at all.  
  
Stiles frantically pulls the hood of his sweater up—Deputy Gomez gives him a quizzical look anyway and Stiles thinks she should be _freaking_ grateful—and crouches behind the counter to fiddle with his shoelaces. Smooth criminal.  
  
"Will do, agents," Dad says, holding onto the doorframe. Dad remains there until the two suit-clad FBI agents— _fucking hunters!_ Stiles's brain screams—are out the door. He's about to head back to his office when he catches Deputy Gomez pointing down at Stiles.  
  
"Son?"  
  
Stiles looks up, hood obscuring half his face, and says with way too much enthusiasm, "I brought lunch!"  
  
Dad stands next to him, feet wide apart on his hips. It's difficult to tell whether it's the Sheriff stance or the Dad stance. They might be one and the same. "Care to explain?"  
  
Stiles's lips mimic that of a duck's beak, and he blows a wet breath of air through them, flicking his wrist. It's a poor way to buy yourself time to come up with something at least bordering semi-plausible.  
  
"You know what?" Dad picks up half the containers. "Forget I asked. For the time being," Dad adds, and walks back into the pit.  
  
Stiles sits down on his ass. Deputy Gomez is laughing. He's not sure if he got away with that or not. Probably not.  
  
At least he knows where the hunters are staying. It's clear they have no intention of leaving. Not that any of the pack were under the impression they'd heed Scott's warning. Which also means the Impala Stiles spotted across the street is most likely theirs. It didn't have California license plates, and the FBI don't drive old-school Chevy's. But hunters might.  
  
  
**2.0**   
Dean wakes to the clickity-clack of Sam's fingers hitting keys on the laptop. It's the equivalent of a rooster's crow at dawn, although more predictable. As it turns out, Dean's childhood is all lies and rooster's pretty much crow whenever they damn well please.  
  
"What time is it?" Dean asks.  
  
"Around ten."  
  
"How long've you been up?"  
  
"Half an hour, maybe?"  
  
Dean grunts, sitting up in the bed with some effort. Whenever he gets more than two to three hours of sleep, it feels like waking from a fifty year long coma. It's like inhabiting the body of an eighty year old man with degenerative arthritis.  
  
Dean squints over at the table Sam's occupying. "You find anything? I'm assuming you're doing research," Dean garbles through a yawn.  
  
"Bobby's emailed some info about wolf packs. There's not much, and what there is isn't all that helpful. I've also run 'Stiles' and 'Scott' through the registries. There's more than one Scott in Beacon Hills, three of which are high schoolers. No-one named Stiles."  
  
"Great." Dean grunts again as he gets to his feet. "I gotta brush my teeth, then we go get some breakfast."  
  
The motel room is like any other they've stayed in over the last fifteen or so years. Erected somewhere in the 60s or 70s and left to its steady decline ever since. The bathroom here doesn't have black-green mold covering various corners and surfaces, though.  
  
Dean picks up toothbrush and toothpaste, finding them both wanting. The bristles on his toothbrush look like they've had several close encounters with concrete. There's barely any toothpaste left, because Sam eats the stuff.  
  
Life on the road is only charming in the movies, kids. Unless you favor dull razors and the accompanying razor burn. Or developing allergies to cheap shaving creams and as equally cheap body washes over time. Owning not a single sock without holes in them. That one toenail that keeps falling off at random. Getting actual fucking head lice from a motel pillow. Sour-smelling washing machines at skeevy Laundromats. Microwave burritos that are coal on the outside and glaciers on the inside. Upside? Can be used as a concealed weapon in a clinch.  
  
Life on the road is a long list of grievances.  
  
"Dean?"  
  
"Wha'?" Dean removes his toothbrush and spits into the sink.  
  
"You parked the car just outside last night, right? 'Cause it's not here. It's not anywhere," Sam says. He barely manages to get the last bit out before Dean appears right next to him in the doorway. Dean's got a vice grip on his toothbrush and a froth of toothpaste around his mouth.  
  
This is like the time Bela got his Baby impounded. Only worse, because this could be some backwards redneck, pagan deity worshipping yokel taking his Baby for a joyride. Something cold and tingly settles at the base of Dean's skull. He's _this_ close to hyperventilating. He's gonna find his Baby in some back alley stripped for parts.  
  
"Where's my fucking car?" Dean says, white foam flying. He walks to the middle of the empty parking spot and looks every which way. "Somebody _stole my fucking Baby!_ “  
  
Which is when this pretty-boy, hipster douchebag in skinny jeans and a leather jacket comes walking up to them out of fucking nowhere, with the audacity to say, "Hey, dude, calm down! It's fine!"  
  
It screams 'demon' to Dean. Too bad Dean's gun is still on the nightstand. "Fine?! It's not fucking _fine_!”  
  
Sam asks, "Who are you? What do you want?"  
  
Pretty-boy's tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans, feet apart as he turns slightly to look at Sam. He balances on his heels. "I thought it'd be pretty obvious, Sammy," Pretty-boy says and winks.  
  
Demon, definitely demon.  
  
“ _Ruby?_ “ Sam sounds a little too breathless and panicky for Dean's liking.  
  
"What? No, of course not— _man_ , you guys are seriously slow. Here's a hint: not a demon."  
  
"Why don't you just tell us who you are before I stick a knife in you as a precaution," Dean says.  
  
"I'm horrified you'd suggest such a thing," Pretty-boy says though he doesn't look it. He's got a little smile on his face, and it's creeping Dean out.  
  
Dean does actually have a knife stuck to his ankle; it's not the demon knife, but sometimes you can't afford to be picky. Sam's looking confused and constipated, which means he's forcing himself into understanding this. Like he's found the pieces and now he's just got to puzzle them together.  
  
"I'm seriously not above—" Dean starts but gets interrupted by Sam chuckling. Dean turns to look at him with undisguised outrage. “ _Now's_ the time you decide to lose your fucking marbles?"  
  
Pretty-boy raises a pair of thick, expectant eyebrows at both of them.  
  
"Dean," Sam says, still chuckling a little. He sounds like a man defeated. "Think about it. This county has a town literally named after the fact it's got a supernatural beacon at its center. Less than 48 hours ago we tangled with a witch and a pack of werewolves. _Teenage_ witch and werewolves."  
  
"Yeah, so?" Dean says, screwing up his face. Pretty-boy raises his shoulders like he's saying _wasn't me_. Dean turns to look at him properly, and the horrible, _terrible_ truth of it all dawns on him. "No. Absolutely not. You have _gotta_ be fucking kidding with me.”  
  
"It does seem like the kind of prank a teenager might pull. I mean, you did threaten to kill him."  
  
"Oh, and I did that alone, huh? Where's your _Freaky Friday Pinocchio_ bullshit?"  
  
"My what?"  
  
" _I don't know!_ “ Dean throws his hands up. He takes a short walk to the corner of the building, draws in a couple of breaths, comes back. Pretty-boy's still there. "Okay. So what you're saying is a teenage witch—I can't believe the words coming out of my mouth right now—not only turned my Baby—"  
  
Pretty-boy waves.  
  
“—into a _person_ , but has the fucking mojo to do it?"  
  
"I guess he wasn't lying when he said he could drop us with his hands tied behind his back. It makes sense, actually. Some of what Bobby sent mentioned emissaries; they're witches who work as advisors to the alpha. Usually they aren't known to the pack, or that's how it was back in the day. The werewolves were clearly protective of him. Maybe it works like covens? Increased power?" Sam shrugs.  
  
"I hate this. I hate our life, Sam. I fucking hate witches. I'm gonna string that fucking kid up and—"  
  
“Yeah, he’s a kid, so maybe no rash decisions yet?”  
  
"He's a witch! He's an _emissary_ whatever the fuck that means! He's a high schooler and he's already got this much juice—" Dean gesticulates at Baby “—Imagine what kinda power he's gonna have when he's had a few years to fucking _mature_!"  
  
"This is hardly a crime against humanity, though," Sam reasons. "I'm not saying I'm not worried, but think about it. He could've done something way worse than this to get back at you—us—for being assholes. We'd be pretty powerless against that. But he didn't."  
  
"In my humble fucking opinion, this is a crime against humanity."  
  
Baby considers them both for a moment, then saunters off into their motel room. He sits down on Dean's bed and is picking at a thread at the cuff of his loose sweater when Sam and Dean re-enter the room.  
  
The leather jacket he's wearing looks eerily similar to one Dean had in high school. Dark brown and faded from years of use. It'd been too big for him when he'd first got it, but he'd worn it almost religiously. He wonders what happened to it.  
  
Like he can read Dean's mind, Baby wrings the jacket off and throws it behind him. Those skin-tight jeans definitely aren't anything Dean's ever worn, past or present. He's removed quite a few of them over the years, though. In that car. Inside his Baby.  
  
Which brings him to an important question: Why is his Baby a dude?  
  
This is not what Dean's imagined, during truly idle hours and private ruminations. Baby's always been a woman: a tall, leggy redhead with a sweet face and borderline deadly kind of _allure_. Not... this.  
  
Not a tall, dirty-blond hipster douche with blue eyes, who looks, for some reason, kind of like the main guy from the _Star Trek_ reboot. If Baby starts talking like Shatner, Dean's putting one between her eyes. His eyes.  
  
Who the fuck has eyes that blue, anyway?  
  
Baby pushes up the sleeves of his sweater, and Dean clocks the tattoo on Baby's forearm. Baby looks at him like he's waiting for something.  
  
Dean needs whiskey. So much fucking whiskey.  
  
  
**2.5**  
The motel isn't exactly bustling with patrons. It's on the outskirts of things, close to the motorway. Stiles only has a vague memory of it even existing prior to the hunters mentioning it.  
  
At four in the morning, it's got this strange sense of liminal urgency. Like you aren't supposed to stop and stay, only pass on through. Which suits Stiles's purposes just fine. It also looks like the kind of place that doesn't ask for ID, and only accepts cash. There's no security cameras in the parking lot, either. Stiles is surrounded by rooms on two floors, and not a single witness.  
  
So when all is said and done, Stiles drives away from the motel and straight onto the motorway. He stops at a 24/7 fast food joint a couple of miles outside Beacon Hills. He's not sure he's even in Beacon County anymore. Considering how there's gonna be two very pissed off hunters waking up in about five hours, it's probably for the better.  
  
There'd only been two cars in the motel parking lot. The Impala and an old Honda. The Honda had Michigan plates. When he left, there was still only the Impala and old Honda in the parking lot.  
  
Stiles orders a bucket of soggy fries, and eats them sitting on a bench while the sun slowly rises. He'd reassess his life-choices, but he doesn't want to. He calls Scott.  
  
"You know how, as your advisor in all things mystical, and as your best friend, I usually advise you not to be an idiot who makes reckless and stupid decisions based explicitly on your personal thoughts and feelings?"  
  
Scott groans, rustles his sheets, and groans again. "Dude. It's barely six a.m., and I know for a fact you're not dying."  
  
"What I'm saying, Scott, at 6:25 in the morning, is this: I am most definitely an idiot who's made a reckless and stupid decision based explicitly on my personal thoughts and feelings."  
  
"Isn't reckless and stupid pretty much the same thing?"  
  
"Now is not the time for semantics, buddy!" Stiles flaps his free hand, upsetting the few leftover fries. He gets salt all over his lap. He swears he can hear his own heartbeat reverberate inside his head. Is it starting to get irregular? Heart murmur? Arrhythmia? Is he about to have a heart attack?  
  
"Stiles," Scott says, sounding much more upright and lucid. "What did you do?”  
  
  
**3.0**  
Baby is not a demon. Neither is he a shapeshifter, a witch, or anything else Sam and Dean can think to test him for. Baby's face isn’t in any 'missing persons' databases, either.  
  
They even call Bobby, who says it’s not actually that far-fetched, that this is in fact the physical embodiment of Dean's car. Except the words Bobby use are more colorful and have the usual undercurrent of questioning their intelligence.  
  
They don’t call Cas, even though Dean can tell Sam wants to.  
  
So three and a half days in, Dean's learned a few things about Baby. Like how he possesses sweat-glands, along with all other basic biological functions and needs. Add this to the ever-growing list of things Dean never expected he'd have to deal with at any point in his life. Baby also sings _Air Supply_ while showering.  
  
He steals t-shirts from Dean _and_ Sam. Dean's fall just short of a perfect fit, while Sam's are too big across the shoulders and chest. Baby always dresses in the bathroom and sleeps with all his clothes on. He does, on the other hand, go commando. The latter is something Dean wishes he could erase from his mind considering how he figured that one out.  
  
It's a good thing the motel has its own makeshift laundromat.  
  
-  
  
Dean throws the car keys to the rental on the table, take-out bags following suit, albeit more gently.  
  
"I've been doing some research into these kids," Sam says. "I got hold of a yearbook, and it turns out most of what we dug up before getting here is at least tangentially related to the pack." He exchanges a small stack of photocopies for one of the bags. "Which, by the way, might be bigger than just the three werewolves we met. I've been checking obits, local newspapers, death certificates; anything that's open to the public."  
  
Dean returns from the bathroom, wiping his hands on his jeans. "You find anything good?" He grabs one of the take-out bags and throws it at Baby sitting cross-legged on Sam's bed. He's reading a local history pamphlet he'd picked up at the front desk. It's outdated by at least a decade.  
  
Dean sits down across from Sam at the table and starts unfurling the greasy paper of his hamburger.  
  
"Stiles is the Sheriff's son. Considering we've got angel scratches _and_ hex bags protecting us, this could explain how he found us anyway. His mom died quite a few years ago, nothing supernatural. Scott McCall, the alpha; his dad's an FBI agent, but he doesn't live close. So we don't need to worry about that first thing. His mom's an ER nurse at the county hospital. So it looks like we're pretty safe here."  
  
"Who the hell names their kid Stiles?" Dean grumbles through a mouthful. Sam ignores him.  
  
"Scott's former, deceased girlfriend was Allison Argent. Remember Chris Argent, in Massachusetts a couple of years back? That's his daughter. Was his daughter. Chris’s sister, Kate Argent, killed almost the entire Hale family, because, I’m guessing, they were werewolves. The only survivors were Laura, Derek, and Cora. Laura was killed a few years ago, in Beacon Hills. Derek was the primary murder suspect but he got exonerated. Derek and Cora are all that's left of the Hales. I can't find Cora in any of the yearbooks, but Derek apparently lives in Beacon Hills, still. So I don't think we'd be far off assuming he's part of the pack we tangled with."  
  
"Peachy," Dean says. "And I thought our family was dysfunctional."  
  
"So, what's next?"  
  
"We figure out what the hell's killing off people around here, then we deal with the pack, or whatev—" Dean cuts himself off at Baby's muffled swear. Dean looks over at the bed at the same moment Sam does. Sam takes a deep breath, exhaling it through his nose.  
  
"Are you actually five?" Dean asks Baby. "Can you be normal for five minutes and eat your damn cheese and bacon burger with the cheese and bacon _on_ the burger?"  
  
"No." Baby shoves a bacon strip into his mouth, leaving half of it dangling out one corner. He picks up the cheese to put it on the paper next to him. Through his chewing, Baby offers Dean a greasy smirk.  
  
This is another thing Dean's learnt about Baby: he's got quirks. You wouldn't think inanimate objects would have quirks. And this is just one in a growing pile, no less. Baby had—has—quirks as a car, too. Most of them acquired after the last time she got totalled. Still, it's not the same.  
  
"What do you mean by 'deal with', though? I mean, half of them are barely even legal," Sam says. He wipes mayonnaise from his chin.  
  
"I don't know," Dean replies. “Just—we'll deal with it however we deal with it when we deal with it."  
  
"Okay, Dr. Seuss."  
  
Dean deadpans him.  
  
"What about Cas? Maybe he could help us out," Sam suggests at length. He’d been repressing that one.  
  
"He's busy."  
  
"Doing what?"  
  
"What am I, psychic?"  
  
"Sorry I asked."  
  
"My money’s on lovers spat,” Baby says after a moment's strained quiet.  
  
"Nobody asked you, Baby," Dean says, putting the remainder of his burger down. "We gotta find you a different name."  
  
"Hey, you're the one who christened me. You're stuck with Baby, sweetcheeks."  
  
"It's already been a week, Dean. And so far all we've done is piss off a local pack of miscellaneous, and got the Impala turned into—well, that." Sam nods over at Baby.  
  
"Hey," Baby says, though he doesn't look half as offended as he sounds. He's probably smeared grease all over Sam's sheets.  
  
"Argent. We could get in touch with him. He owes us one. He lived here, he lost family here, most of it likely tied to the supernatural. Chris Argent might be able to tell us something about this place, about this pack. Especially considering his sister killed one of their own, and his _daughter_ used to date the alpha. If he left them alive, there's gotta be a reason for it."  
  
"I don't like it." Dean takes a big bite of his burger, chews. He can feel Baby's eyes on the back of his neck. "But yeah, fuck it. We've got nothing better.”  
  
  
**3.5**  
It's close to 1 a.m. when Scott knocks on Stiles's window. Stiles is so used to it at this point he doesn't even get startled anymore. Mostly. He breaks the mountain ash line to let Scott in.  
  
"Dude, Chris Argent texted Isaac fifteen minutes ago."  
  
"What?" Stiles pauses in sitting down on his chair. "What'd he want?"  
  
“Those hunters called him, asking about the pack. Argent said 'be careful'."  
  
"They know Argent?"  
  
"Yeah, apparently. I guess it's a hunter thing or something. Did you find anything on them?" Scott kicks off his shoes and sits down on Stiles's bed. He looks a little harried.  
  
"Nothing all that helpful. They've died, like, a hundred times. I mean, officially. They've been on FBI's 'most wanted' list. I found some obscure forums dedicated to these books called _Supernatural_. They're supposed to be based on their lives or whatever, which is pretty trippy. I skimmed through one, and if that shit's actually true? Dean Winchester's a bona fide Hell escapee. Or... abductee? Angels, bro."  
  
"That's... surreal?" Scott makes a face like he doesn't know how to feel about it. Stiles can relate.  
  
"Yeah, tell me about it." Stiles turns back to his laptop, catching an influx of new iirc messages out of the corner of his eye. Scott throws himself down on Stiles’s bed.  
  
This omega they're hunting is making less and less sense. Omegas aren't known for disappearing only to reappear in the same place. Especially not over and over like this one is doing. Like it has a hunting ground, a territory.  
  
Omegas aren't territorial; they're desperate, often driven feral. If they do return to a place, it's usually because their old pack is there, or used to be there.  
  
It's like it doesn't even have a rudimentary sense of self-preservation.  
  
Scott and Derek have even been in touch with some of the other packs in North California, the few they have ties to, and none of them are missing any members. None of their members have been exiled in recent years, either.  
  
"Have you told Derek about this? The deal with the Winchesters, I mean," Scott says at length. His eyes are half-closed. He looks like he's about to fall asleep.  
  
"He's your second, Scott."  
  
"No, he's not. You are."  
  
"Can't be emissary and second at the same time, my man."  
  
"Okay: Lydia's my second." Scott tilts his head back the slightest, eyes closed now. Stiles snorts.  
  
"Dude, just ask Derek already. I know you want to. And before you say it; he won't say no. He's practically been raised for it. You know, with Laura and everything. He doesn't want to be alpha, but he wants to protect the pack."  
  
“ _Fine_. I'll ask him."  
  
"Soon. Before the next full moon."  
  
"Why? What's gonna happen if I don't?"  
  
"I'll turn you both into toads."  
  
"Har har." Scott sits up. "Speaking of turning people into toads: Have you gotten any death threats from the Winchesters yet, vis a vis their car?"  
  
"It's been eerily quiet. I mean, I _know_ they've figured out it was me. Who else would it be? They gotta know. So I'm just waiting for the moment I get my throat slit to be honest." Stiles touches the scabbed over cut on his neck.  
  
"You think they'd actually do that?"  
  
Stiles spreads his hands out. His fingers twitch. He honestly has no idea.  
  
Scott frowns, but doesn't press it. When Stiles had initially come clean about what he'd done, Scott'd been angry, frustrated, and a little incredulous. Which were all valid, all deserved reactions.  
  
Once those feelings had settled, Scott had been _amused_. He wasn't really one for holding grudges. But he did decide not to tell the pack, not yet at least, which Stiles was eternally grateful for. Everyone is allowed mistakes, but this was a pretty stupid one, even by their standards.  
  
"So you haven't told Derek about the Winchesters?" Scott asks, bringing them back to the eye of the storm.  
  
Stiles dithers for a moment before saying, "I sent him a text just before you got here." Stiles ignores the slow spread of a grin on Scott's face in favor of shifting his chair back and forth so it squeaks. He knows this annoys Scott's sensitive ‘wolf ears. Stiles can practically see them trying to flatten against the sides of Scott’s head.  
  
"How's that going?" Scott asks anyway, because he's an asshole.  
  
"Well, my window's still intact, so."  
  
"He probably hasn't read the text yet?"  
  
"Probably."  
  
"Seriously though, when are you two gonna—"  
  
Stiles pelts Scott in the face with dirty laundry he finds littered on the floor. If he's offensive enough to all five senses, maybe Scott'll leave it alone.  
  
  
**4.0**  
You stop believing in coincidences pretty quick in their line of work, so Dean likes to think it’s some kind of kismet when he—quite accidentally—catches sight of the witchy boy-wonder and what Dean is pretty sure is another pack member, one Derek Hale, at the supermarket. It’s not a local, which is why Dean’s there in the first place—he needs alcohol, laundry detergent, a couple lengths of iron chain just to be on the safe side, and some socks—so really, it’s got to be fate.  
  
Dean hangs back, watching them bicker about what does and does not belong in the disproportionately large cart, which goes veering off behind an aisle of cereals when Stiles decides to use it for transportation.  
  
“You still wanna team up with the locals?” Dean asks Sam on the other end of the line as he hurries himself through the self-checkout. “‘Cause I’ve got eyes on Sabrina and Derek Hale.”  
  
-  
  
They trail Stiles and Derek to an old industrial building, and park the rental a few blocks away. Thankfully, Stiles and Derek's shopping spree had stretched out long enough for Dean to catch up with Sam.  
  
And Baby.  
  
Which brings about how pissed off Dean is about the fact they've got to _rent_ a car. It's not like they can drive a stolen one in a town as small as Beacon Hills, even if they did change up the plates. Just like they can't stake out any of these kids' houses, their school, 'cause they're grown-ass fucking men and that's probably going to trip some kind of Amber alert. That, and one of the aforementioned kids is the Sheriff's son. Which is just fucking fantastic, really.  
  
Since it's looking more and more like they're going to have to stick around for a while, it probably wasn't such a stroke of genius to pass as FBI agents, either. To be fair, it'd seemed like an open and shut case at the time, even with the misfit gaggle of supernaturally charged teenagers they'd ambushed in the woods.  
  
"You stay here," Dean says to Baby, stuck in the backseat, looking about as happy about this prospect as Dean is about the rental. "Don't move. Don't even breathe unless you absolutely gotta. Just stay put until we get back."  
  
Sam and Dean don't try to be stealthy as they approach the parking lot, but they still manage to surprise Stiles and Derek in the middle of unloading groceries.  
  
"I'm not saying it's the greatest idea to have ever greated in the history of greatness, but with enough explosives—"  
  
"Stiles." Derek's expression closes off impressively fast when he notices Sam and Dean approaching. That's at least a little satisfying.  
  
Making a frustrated noise, Stiles turns around and says, "Oh, great. Dumb and Dumber. What do you want?"  
  
Dean's seriously starting to question this kid's apparent lack of self-preservation.  
  
"You got two alphas in your pack? 'Cause I could'a sworn Grumpy over there flashed red just now. Or are you just happy to see me?" Dean says.  
  
Maybe he should start questioning his own lack of self-preservation, too.  
  
"What do you guys want?" Stiles repeats, undeterred.  
  
"The omega," Sam cuts in before Dean manages to shove his whole foot _and_ leg down his own throat. He'd (begrudgingly) agreed not to mention the car. For now, anyway. He yearns to scream bloody fucking murder and string the kid up by his balls, but he can hold it. Dean can savor it.  
  
"We want to find and kill this thing as much as you do. We might as well team up. We'll get out of your hair that much faster. Two birds, one stone," Sam reasons.  
  
Derek's returned to unloading the car while Stiles leans up against it, all casual like. Dean's not fooled. He knows Grumpy's following every single move any of them make. It's pretty clear; one hair out of place on this kid's head and Dean's going to be holding his own guts in.  
  
Which isn't really a comforting thought, considering the still-healing scab on the kid's neck courtesy of Dean's hunting knife. Can Derek smell the blood on the blade despite a thorough cleaning?  
  
"You wanna team up? Seriously?" Stiles snorts. "You know, if you'd just said this the first time around, your odds of making it happen would've probably been much greater."  
  
"So that's a 'no', then?" Dean asks.  
  
"I didn't say that." Stiles shrugs and pushes himself away from the car. He picks up more grocery bags than Dean would've thought him capable of. Emissary or no; Stiles doesn't look like somebody with all that much upper body strength. The three layers of sweatshirt and plaid might be deceptive, though. "It's not up to me," Stiles adds as he straightens up. The bags are heavy enough his fingers are going red. He levels a look at Dean, then Sam. "You've gotta take this up with Scott."  
  
"How do we get in touch with Scott, then?" Sam asks, deteriorating into thinly veiled exasperation. They haven't exactly dealt with packs before. Every werewolf they've ever hunted down's been an omega. They don't know the rules of conduct, if there are any. Dean's more of a 'shoot first, ask questions later' kind of guy, but he has to concede to Sam on this.  
  
Stiles blows air through his teeth, like he's considering it. "Phone book?" He grins. Derek nudges him in the back with an elbow as he passes, making Stiles overbalance for a moment. "Good luck!"  
  
They disappear inside the building. It's no doubt warded from basement to rooftop.  
  
Has God brought Gabriel back from permanent angel death just to fuck with their lives? Because Dean wouldn't put that past Him, or anybody else at this point.  
  
Dean turns to Sam. "What the hell just happened?"  
  
  
**4.5**  
Stiles chews on his lip as he puts his share of the grocery bags on the kitchen counter. He makes his way over to the couch on autopilot. He gets to sit there for the entirety of twenty seconds before Derek says, "Did you pull something?"  
  
"What if it's not an omega, though?" Stiles picks a bag at random and starts emptying it. "I mean, they're hunters. Not every hunter is hyper-focused on werewolves. It could be something else."  
  
"Could be," Derek says, which is zero percent helpful. "What did you say their names were again?"  
  
"Sam and Dean Winchester. Still don't know more than what I texted you."  
  
Derek's response to said text had not been to smash in Stiles's window as the result of misplaced overprotectiveness. (Okay, so Stiles had been a little hyperbolic about that one.) Instead, it'd been a lukewarm 'ok'. Derek hadn't said much during the pack meeting the next day, either.  
  
"I haven't had a chance to work some proper magic on them yet. Figuratively," Stiles is quick to add when Derek levels him with a raised eyebrow. Stiles flexes his fingers, miming typing on a keyboard.  
  
Derek leans on the kitchen counter, supporting his upper-body on the heels of his hands. Both of his eyebrows are raised now, yet it does little in changing the quality of his expression. "Why do you always try lying first, when you know I'm going to figure it out, anyway?"  
  
"Because, one day," Stiles says, stacking five packs of ground beef atop each other in front of Derek. " _I'm_ gonna figure out a way to lie to you guys without any of _you_ realizing it."  
  
"That's very comforting."  
  
"I can't smell your emotions at all times, so I think it's only fair I should be able to keep some secrets," Stiles counters.  
  
Derek hums noncommittally and returns to unpacking groceries.  
  
A couple of weeks ago, Stiles was still ninety-nine percent certain they were dealing with an omega, despite having little success in the month plus since it'd arrived.  
  
But then Dad floated over some information about an unusual increase in disappearances in and around Beacon Hills. Where the victims showed up dead and chewed-out in the middle of the woods. It didn't do much to help narrow it down though, since the bite marks were still clearly from some sort of fanged animal, and all the werewolves in the pack agreed it still _smelled_ like a werewolf.  
  
If the Sheriff's department didn't crack the case soon, there'd be actual FBI agents coming in, and they'd learned from experience how fucking abysmal that'd likely turn out. Because wild animals—feral, savage, what have you—aren't known to lure human victims from the safety of public spaces and into the woods to maul them.  
  
"So what do you think it might be, if it's not an omega?" Derek asks once they're done putting everything away. He sits down on the couch next to Stiles.  
  
Stiles is waiting for his piece of shit laptop to boot up from its doze. He really should invest in a new one. He doesn't really trust the external HD he uses for back-up, either. He lives every part of his life on the edge. Oh yeah.  
  
"I have no clue," Stiles says, finally able to open the PDF version of the bestiary. There's still a lot of it that needs typing up. And Lydia needs to translate some stuff, too. "Bigfoot?" Stiles suggests, glancing at Derek.  
  
"Might as well be at this point."  
  
Stiles is pretty sure Bigfoot isn't real, though. Which is kinda sad.  
  
"Incubus-slash-succubus, sirens, wendigos, ghouls—those are the only ones I can think of, and only two of them actually eat people. And ghouls don't really migrate, they kinda just keep to their graveyard of choice." Stiles hands the laptop over to Derek.  
  
Derek skims the handful of pages before shaking his head and handing the laptop back.  
  
"Wendigos don't migrate, either. There hasn't been any incidents of cannibalism like this inside or around Beacon County in way too long for them to suddenly start appearing and attacking people now, even if they were hibernating." Derek pulls his legs up and crosses them at the ankles on the living-room table. He puts his hands on his stomach, rests his head against the back of the couch, and closes his eyes. His thigh touches Stiles's bent knee.  
  
Ever since the pack basically hijacked Derek's loft as unofficial meeting place after he came back from his road trip with Cora last summer, Stiles has been here often enough it doesn't feel like he's a barely tolerated presence anymore. If anything, he spends more time here than any of the other pack members do. Especially since Isaac chose to move back in with the McCalls after his short stint in France.  
  
There' a TV in the apartment, now. More lights. Comfortable furniture in the living-room, some stools by the kitchen counter, even a dining table that can seat all of them. More often than not it ends up being used as a workstation, but it's the thought that counts.  
  
Stiles still has an evidence board in his bedroom at home, but he's got one here, too. This one probably sees more action these days.  
  
"I've found some other Monsters of the Week that might fit the cannibal bill," Stiles says at length. "But they're pretty singular in their dietary needs, you know? They wanna munch on your liver only, or your pituitary gland, or your spleen. Hearts, lungs, brains, other organs I can't remember right now. It doesn't fit."  
  
"What about demons?"  
  
"Demons?" Stiles frowns down at the screen, scrolling through Google's hits on 'does Bigfoot eat people?' "You mean, like... Hell demons? Satan's arts and crafts rejects?"  
  
"Yes. The Winchesters, like you said, they’re not exclusively into hunting werewolves. They might know something we don't."  
  
"Wait, you know who they are? As in, before they even showed up here?" Stiles bodily turns, almost tangling himself up in his own legs as the laptop slides off his thighs and lands at an angle on the couch. "Share with the class, Derek!"  
  
"I've heard the name, once or twice. Usually in relation to demons. Which isn't something we get a lot of around here." Derek narrows his eyes slightly, no doubt noticing the slight uptick in the speed of Stiles's heartbeats. "Might be worth agreeing to a talk."  
  
"Dude." Stiles slaps the back of his hand against Derek's chest. "You're suggesting we go talk to _hunters_?"  
  
"They showed good faith in coming here. Besides, they're not stupid. They're not going to do anything in broad daylight, in a public place," Derek says, his eyes tracking Stiles's movements.  
  
Stiles turns his back to Derek to retrieve the laptop. "It could be a demon, but it's not likely." There’s a blog post about the possibility of Bigfoot kidnapping and eating children in a state park in Idaho. Stiles clicks the link. "As far as I know, demons don't _need_ or really _want_ to eat people, so they've got that going for them. This kinda body count with this amount of meat and organs missing doesn't spell out 'demon' to me. I'm putting my money on Bigfoot."  
  
Derek's about to say something—no doubt to question Stiles's intelligence and/or sanity—when the door to the loft slides open and Scott enters. He's on the phone. Stiles turns and leans over the back of the couch.  
  
"There's a diner on fifth called The Mulch. We'll meet you there tomorrow, at one. I won't bring any of my betas, only my emissary." Scott raises his eyebrows at Stiles. Stiles nods in agreement. "No wolfsbane. Not in bullets, not as powder. Deal."  
  
"Winchesters?" Derek asks, draping an arm over the couch. Stiles pointedly does not bite into the naked flesh of Derek's forearm.  
  
"Yeah. They wanna meet tomorrow, talk about 'combining our efforts'."  
  
"They showed up here too, earlier," Stiles says.  
  
Scott nods and sits down on one of the stools by the kitchen bench. He pockets his phone. "Where's your car, anyway?"  
  
"Mechanic. Again." Stiles heaves an overly aggrieved sigh. Scott grins. "That was fast, though. I guess they're not playing games."  
  
"I know it's movie night, but I wanna have a quick pack meeting when the rest get here, just so they're in the loop about what's going on," Scott says.  
  
"Look at our baby boy, all grown up. Before you know it, he'll be off to college, and I'll cry for days, I will." Stiles puts on a choked up grimace. Derek shoves Stiles's face away with his hand, letting it rest on Stiles's neck for a moment when Stiles doesn't retaliate, just smirks.  
  
"Most dysfunctional family ever," Scott says. It's said with love, definitely with love.  
  
  
**5.0**  
"I brought you pie." Dean sets the container on the spread of Sam's bed.  
  
Sam snorts as he passes on his way to the bathroom. Dean levels a look at the back of his neck that, had they been kids, would've been the mark of imminent demise.  
  
Baby looks up from Sam's laptop. He meets Dean's eyes with a narrowed gaze, his fingers still resting on the keyboard. "It's butterscotch cream," Dean adds, narrowing his own gaze. He's not entirely sure what's happening. When in doubt: mirror.  
  
"Is this a bribe?" Baby asks, gaze falling to the hefty slice of butterscotch cream pie by his ankles. The transparent container sits at a slight angle. They don't exactly have proper cutlery on hand (that might be an idea, though), so Dean made sure the waitress taped one of those plastic forks to the container. Why she taped it to the underside, who knows.  
  
"Bribe for what, exactly?"  
  
"I don't know, maybe this whole improvised house arrest thing?"  
  
"Just eat the damn pie."  
  
It's delicious pie. Dean had two slices himself. He's a little queasy, but it was worth it. Despite the counter-intuitive name of the diner, The Mulch had one of the best burgers to have ever graced Dean's palate. Screw Oprah. Many a noteworthy thing has graced Dean's palate, so he knows what he's talking about.  
  
The meeting with Teen Wolf and the witchy sidekick had been short and sweet. It'd lasted fifteen minutes, and all parties got their terms across and approved. Stiles and Scott were already waiting when Sam and Dean arrived.  
  
They were sitting at a tall table facing the floor-to-ceiling window, sharing a plate of curly fries. Stiles's left leg was jumping up and down.  
  
To anyone else, they wouldn't look any different from the other high schoolers lazing away their Sunday in the diner, no doubt nursing illicit hangovers. But Dean had caught Stiles looking at the white rental car—a Hyundai Accent, for fuck's sake. Stiles'd looked a little green about the gills for a moment. An expression that quickly shifted back into something casual when he swatted Scott's hand away from the plate.  
  
Stiles and Scott left immediately after they'd come to an agreement. Sam and Dean would be meeting the rest of the pack in a couple of days, on a Tuesday afternoon, at Derek's loft.  
  
That burger and that pie, though? Better than sex.  
  
-  
  
Dean's lying in bed, an arm obscuring the light from the lamps. He's been lying there for a few hours, swimming between lucidity and sleep, unable to settle. Just listens to Baby flip the pages of a book and taking bites of what might as well be infinity pie at the rate it's taking Baby to finish it. Sam's whiling away at his laptop, doing research or surfing porn, who knows.  
  
"Are we seriously gonna go in unprotected tomorrow, though?"  
  
"We agreed on it," Sam says absently, and Dean doesn't need to remove his arm to know Sam's shrugging. "Besides, we only said we wouldn't bring wolfsbane or iron."  
  
"A regular gun or knife ain't gonna do much when push comes to shove."  
  
"You really think that's gonna happen?" Sam asks. There's a rapid burst of typing, then silence again.  
  
"No. But it's the principle of the thing. They've got, what was it—five werewolves? Two of which are alphas, they've got a witch, they're on home turf, _and_ their weapons are _literally_ a part of them. You get mauled by a handful of werewolves, you're not likely to get up from that. I shoot one full of lead and it gets, what, mildly aggrieved?"  
  
"What're you gonna do, Dean? Sneak wolfsbane into their den?"  
  
"No, but I'm gonna keep a stash of it in the rental along with the iron chain."  
  
Sam doesn't say anything in response to that. He doesn't have to. Dean recognizes this silence. The disgruntled, borderline righteous silence with a sprinkle of inane passive-aggression.  
  
Dean's drifting back into limbo again, almost completely asleep when a paperback hits his chest. He removes his arm from his eyes and squints up at Baby. He's practically looming by Dean's bed. "What," Dean grumbles.  
  
"I'm coming with you next time," Baby says. "I'm sick of being cooped up in this shitty motel room, or that shitty car." Baby points in the general direction of the parking lot with the plastic fork. Its tines are mangled from being chewed on.  
  
"Yeah, and what exactly are you going to do?" Dean grunts as he sits up. There's a reason hunters don't live much longer than fifty, at best. You hit twenty-five, and it's all downhill from there. Thirty, and you're living on borrowed time. It's not the skills that weaken, it's the _body_. He meets Baby's gaze, raising his eyebrows in wait of an answer. "What exactly do you think you'll be doing over there that you're not already doing here?"  
  
Baby squares his jaw. He looks angry, genuinely angry. In the last week, Dean hasn't seen that on Baby's face before. When he thinks about it, Dean hasn't seen much range of emotion at all, other than the bratty smirks interchanged with mild annoyance. Like stock emotions. It's pretty disconcerting, suddenly.  
  
Baby straightens and pushes up the sleeves of Sam's olive green henley. Dean's eyes only briefly flicker to the tattoo on Baby's forearm, but Baby catches it, anyway.  
  
"Forget it," Baby says, picking out clothes from the fresh pile of laundry upended on his cot. The same clothes he'd worn when he first arrived. He locks the bathroom door behind him, and the shower comes on a few minutes later, the spray hitting the tiles in an uneven patter thanks to the temperamental water pressure.  
  
Dean watches the door for a moment. It feels like he just missed something. When he looks over at Sam, he looks like he's got a couple of ideas as to what it might be, but Dean doesn't really want to hear any of them.  
  
"I'll be back in a couple of hours." Dean grabs the keys from the table and leaves before Sam gets a chance to ask him where he's going, or why he's leaving in the first place. It’s not like Dean actually knows where he’s going or what he’s doing.  
  
  
**5.5**  
There's elderflowers drying on an uneven cloth of cotton that covers the entire length of the dining room table.  
  
It drives Dad crazy when Stiles dries herbs at home. So, when necessary, he commandeers various flat surfaces in Derek's apartment. It's not like it's an all-year-round operation or anything. The large windows and even temperature of the loft helps. The only thing Stiles can't dry in the apartment is wolfsbane, which isn't something he needs to replenish that often, anyway.  
  
Lydia takes another bulb of elderflower and gently removes the tiny white petals, letting them fall into the tupperware box in front of her. Stiles has nearly filled his already. The elders started blooming early this year.  
  
"We should try making you a crown out of 'elder branches," Stiles muses. He runs a hand through his hair, mussing it up and no doubt adding tiny white petals to it. His left hand has gone clammy from holding onto the flower stems.  
  
Lydia looks up from checking her phone, asks, "Why?" and puts the phone back on the table, screen down.  
  
Stiles shrugs. "Might open you up to the world of spirits or something. Like actually being able to see and talk to them."  
  
"I think I'll pass," Lydia replies, her tone dry.  
  
Isaac and Boyd are lounging on the couch, watching reruns of last season’s _The Bachelorette_. Erica's using both of them as leg rests while she does her nails. Derek's having a shower, and Scott's picking up their Chinese food on his way over from the vet’s.  
  
They're waiting for the hunters to arrive, trying to be as casual about it as possible.  
  
Isaac had been the most vocal about the prospect of teaming up with hunters. But he also trusted Scott to a fault, which seemed to at least temper his misgivings. To be fair, none of them were too happy about joining forces with the people who'd be hunting _them_ under different circumstances. Stiles didn't have any illusions about it.  
  
At the same time, none of them could deny the fact a fresh pair of eyes might be exactly what they need.  
  
Stiles’s got no clue what the hell's going on anymore. He's also _slightly_ worried the hunters are going to bring their car with them to the meeting tonight. Stiles isn't ready to come clean to the pack about that less than stellar moment of poor judgement. Maybe his luck'll hold, for once. Maybe, just maybe, he never, ever has to tell the pack about it at all.  
  
-  
  
The protective wards push back for a moment, at exactly a quarter to nine, before allowing the hunters to enter the building. In a loud whisper, Stiles says, " _They're here_.”  
  
Derek looks unimpressed. Scott just grabs another egg roll and slips off his stool by the kitchen counter, and heads for the sliding door. Stiles makes a face at Derek and joins Lydia at the dining table. They continue what feels like the never-ending task of deflowering the 'elders'. They're too versatile not to hoard, though.  
  
Erica, Isaac and Boyd are still prostrate on the couch, though Erica does peek her head over its back when the hunters finally enter.  
  
They hesitate for a moment at the entrance, no doubt noticing the carvings on the concrete frame. Stiles tilts his chair back slightly, spilling tiny petals into his lap. This stuff is like nature's glitter. You’ll keep finding it everywhere for days on end.  
  
Scott clears his throat when Sam and Dean reach the middle of the floor. Derek unobtrusively takes up a spot next to Scott, a little to the side.  
  
"So, I'm Scott, the pack's alpha, which, uh, you guys already know." Scott motions to himself, and Stiles can see Sam and Dean fighting the desire to give each other a _look_. It’s downright painful.  
  
"This is Derek, my right hand. Stiles, our emissary. And that's Lydia," Scott gestures to her, walking a few steps backwards as he does. She throws her red hair over her shoulder, meeting both Sam and Dean's gaze without a flicker of hesitation. "And this is Erica, Boyd, and Isaac, my betas." Scott sits down at the end of the couch's spine. All three betas (half-heartedly) acknowledge Sam and Dean. It's all very diplomatic.  
  
They probably don't come off as a menacing pack to be feared and respected. Confirmed seconds later when Dean says, "You're actually just a bunch of kids," like he'd been harboring some half-baked conviction he'd somehow misunderstood this fact, or glossed over vital parts of it. Or, like all creative writing endeavors for English class in middle school: _then he woke up, realizing it was all a dream... or was it?_  
  
"You're the ones who suggested we ignore our differences for the sake of the greater good, though," Stiles says. He snaps the lid shut on his tupperware box, and shoves his chair back so it screeches against the new floor panels. He crosses his arms over three layers of cotton, and inwardly thanks baby Jesus they didn't bring the car. And, they’re not carrying wolfsbane, as agreed. If they were, they'd be on fire by now. Figuratively speaking. Mostly.  
  
"We haven't found any leads worth following," Sam says, shifting his gaze from Dean to Stiles, then Scott. "We've been looking at some of the wildlife mutilations reported to the Beacons Hills County Animal Control Services. All in the last three months, almost all of them listed as attacks by an unknown predator. Possibly a mountain lion."  
  
"Yeah," Scott says, accepting the olive branch before any of them start snarking. "We've been tracking all wild animal attacks reported to the ACS for the last six months." He removes the empty take-out boxes on the living-room table, allowing Derek to spread out the map. The table isn't small, yet the map still spills over the edges. Erica, Boyd and Isaac get up from their slouch—Boyd mutes the TV—and Lydia and Stiles come over as well. Lydia picks one of the comfiest chairs, letting Stiles borrow the armrest.  
  
Unlike Scott, Sam doesn't lean over so much as crouch; he wouldn't be able to see the map, otherwise. Dean pulls one of the chairs closer, elbows on his knees as he leans forward. Derek braces himself against the back of the couch, his expression a neutral kind of frown.  
  
"What's the difference between the yellow and the green stickers?" Sam asks.  
  
"Actual animal attacks versus what we think are omega attacks," Scott replies.  
  
"And the red?" Dean asks.  
  
"Attacks on humans," Derek replies.  
  
"All in the last month and a couple of weeks," Stiles adds.  
  
The yellows and greens spread out quite wide—when you factor in all of Beacon County, not just Beacon Hills, the 'woods' aren't that small. There's a slightly higher incident rate than usual, but this might simply be because of the disrupting presence of the omega. An apex predator that stands above the usual predators. But the reds are in a much more concentrated cluster, only two outside Beacon Hills; the earliest victims. The latest victim, the sixth, was found at the bottom of a ravine in the Preserve.  
  
"We think the first one," Stiles moves so he can cover the corresponding red dot with his finger, “—was literally just a matter of wrong place, wrong time. She actually had a reason for being in the woods. She always went for walks there, like, twice to three times a week with her dog, so she wasn't lured into the woods. It was just—opportunity, which is consistent with how an omega operates."  
  
"It's possible the dog is what lead the omega to attack," Scott says, and Stiles nods along. "If the omega was already feral at that point, it's possible he or she felt threatened by the dog, killed it, the girl probably got scared which made the omega attack her, too. Then the omega developed a taste for humans, pretty much."  
  
"We've managed to track it, in the woods, in the Preserve," Isaac says to Sam. He glances over at Scott before continuing. "It definitely smells like a werewolf, but we keep losing the scent. It's been stronger over the last couple of days, though."  
  
"Yeah, and we found out where it squatted before it started eating people," Erica chimes in. "This apartment building downtown that's been in development for years."  
  
"Some of us are heading into the Preserve tomorrow, see if we might be able to follow the scent somewhere. We might get lucky," Scott says.  
  
"You might get luckier if you let me join," Stiles adds. He levels Scott with a significant look, ignoring the similar look Derek is directing at Stiles.  
  
"Dude, you're the one who suggested heading to the building to see if you could find something to use for a locating spell," Scott replies. He's got his puppy-dog face on, the 'why are you like this, bro' one.  
  
"Not _instead of_ ,” Stiles says. "Besides, it's a fucking hail Mary, anyway. The blood's stale, and some moldy clothes aren't gonna help me out."  
  
"We're probably not gonna find the omega tomorrow anyway, Stiles," Erica says. She tilts her head to the side, half her face obscured by huge, frizzy curls. She stares at the side of Stiles's face until he breaks eye contact with Scott and acknowledges her. She raises her eyebrows a fraction.  
  
"Fine," Stiles says, still holding Erica's gaze. She's gotten too good at this, bending him like this. She just smiles, pleased with herself no doubt.  
  
"Your phone's ringing," Derek says, looking in Stiles's direction. Stiles is about to pat his front pocket—he rarely has it on silent and it's always on vibrate—when Lydia jumps to her feet. She gracefully lopes over to the dining table where her phone is vibrating along its surface.  
  
"We're about to wrap up," Lydia says to the phone, glancing at Scott. He nods. She proceeds to give Stiles the finger when he grins at her, which only makes him grin wider. He can't hear who's on the other end of the line, but judging by Derek's minute reaction, it's got to be Cora. Lydia disappears down the hallway to the guest bedroom.  
  
"Well, I've got curfew." Erica gets to her feet and stretches, long and lean. She's wearing sweats and one of Stiles's plaid shirts; still, she gets everyone's attention. Stiles kinda wishes he could do that. "Who's driving me home?"  
  
Isaac borrows Derek's car to drive Erica and Boyd home. The conversation at the loft dissolves into Sam and Scott comparing notes with Derek's occasional input. Stiles slides into Lydia's abandoned seat to play _Best Fiends_ on his phone. He plays it like it's the most engrossing thing to have ever existed. It's that, or acknowledge how Dean's been low-key scrutinizing him for the last minute. Two minutes in, and Stiles needs to get the fuck away from Dean’s piercing, green gaze. He not-so-subtly retreats to the dining table.  
  
They've made a pretty good dent in the flower hoard. It should last all through winter, unless something truly terrible happens. If this turns out to be the case, it'll surprise exactly no-one. There's never a dull moment.  
  
"What the fuck did you do to my car?"  
  
" _Oh my fucking god_ ,” Stiles wheezes, turning around with a most dignified flail.  
  
Dean is right there, less than a foot away from Stiles. How can another human being be this stealthy. Isn't it enough Stiles has to deal with werewolves all the time? At least Dean hadn't raised his voice. The momentary stutter of Stiles's heartbeat earns a glance from both Scott and Derek, though.  
  
"Yeah, no, that's not a conversation we're gonna be having here," Stiles says. He ignores the look on Dean's face, which he thinks translates to, _the hell we ain’t_. In the vain hope that Dean takes the hint and follows him, Stiles makes for the roof.  
  
Which sounds like a scenario that could end with Stiles's untimely death, because he is vulnerable to bullets, regardless of whether they're filled with wolfsbane or not. Derek only glances at them as they leave, so he must believe Stiles capable of defending himself against a single hunter. It helps they're heading up to the rooftop, as far away from keen ears as possible. If worst comes to worst, Stiles can just... fling Dean off the building.  
  
"So," Dean says. " _What the fuck did you do to my car?_ "  
  
"It's a personification spell. You've probably already figured that out..."  
  
"Yeah, and I want you to reverse it. _Now_."  
  
Stiles shrugs, says, "You can't. Or, _you_ can't, obviously. But I can't, either."  
  
"For someone who clearly doesn't want his pack to know what he's been up to, you're seriously testing my patience, kid."  
  
"Reversing the spell kinda requires a lot more mojo than casting it. The heavy-dutier spells are like that. Think of it like a built-in 'this is how you learn from your mistakes' mechanism." Stiles gives another shrug, tucks his hands into the pockets of his open hoodie. Dean doesn't look particularly placated. "The spell'll wear out. You know, kinda like cursed objects. Similar principle."  
  
"Cursed objects can retain their magic for literal centuries. Millenia, even."  
  
"I wouldn't be too worried about it. Or, not thousands of years, anyway. My magic's not that hardcore. Though I'm flattered."  
  
"Cut the bullshit, kid."  
  
"I'm not bullshitting you!" Stiles waves his pocketed hands in Dean's direction. "I literally can't reverse it. But personification spells rarely last long, especially when they're cast on something inorganic. Three months, maybe. Two years, tops, if you're real unlucky."  
  
Dean stares a long time without saying anything. Stiles starts fidgeting.  
  
"Why'd you do it?" Dean asks.  
  
"Honestly? 'Cause you threatened my pack, _and_ you threatened to kill me. I don't heal like they do," Stiles adds, putting his head at a slight angle so Dean can glimpse the still-healing scar. It's farther along in the healing process than it ought to be, but nowhere close to how the 'wolves heal. It's just a little bit of magic nudging it along.  
  
Dean's jaw works for a moment, then he says, "Well," pauses, breathes out through his nose. "You have my sincerest apologies."  
  
"That's the most insincere apology I've ever heard, and trust me, buddy, that's saying something. I accept, nevertheless. Still can't reverse the spell, though."  
  
Dean rubs a hand over his face, puts some muscle into it, like he's determined to mangle himself beyond recognition. He does look pretty harassed when he halfheartedly gestures at Stiles a moment later and asks, "You're heading to the omega's old nest tomorrow?"  
  
"Werewolves don't do _nests_. If they did anything, it'd be dens. Which they don't do, either. And yes, I'm going there tomorrow. Why?"  
  
"I'm coming with you. Sammy's probably managed to get himself invited along for the woodland field trip already, so." Dean gets it all out before Stiles can protest. Because Stiles wants to protest, and Dean raises his eyebrows like he _knows_ Stiles wants to protest.  
  
_I did this to myself,_ Stiles thinks, instead.  
  
  
**6.0**  
It's only an eight to ten minute drive from the loft to the motel. Sixteen if you heed the speed limit and don't cut the corners of the winding road during the last leg.  
  
Dean hadn't been wrong in assuming Sam would somehow manage to insinuate himself into tomorrow's tracking session. Sam, on the other hand, is surprised when Dean tells him he's going with Stiles to the omega's old squat.  
  
"They've been tracking this omega for weeks. How likely is it they're gonna catch a break tomorrow," Dean says with a shrug, and shifts his hands on the wheel. He isn't too worried. It's not like they can prevent Sam from carrying wolfsbane _outside_ the loft; not part of the agreement. Besides, Dean trusts the pack more than he trusts Stiles.  
  
Dean'll readily admit to harboring extreme prejudice against any and all witches. Doesn't matter where they draw their power from, what they do or don't do with it.  
  
“We're pretty much playing second fiddle to a bunch of teenagers," Dean says once they reach the winding part of the road.  
  
"It _is_ their territory."  
  
"Don't be reasonable about this. They're kids souped up on monster juice."  
  
"Dean, we've been hunting since we were teens. We were barely that, even."  
  
"That's different."  
  
"How's it different?" Sam turns in his seat to look at Dean.  
  
"Because, we've been hunting _monsters_ since our teens. They _are_ the monsters." Dean takes the turn a little too sharply, even for him. Sam is staring. Trying to burn a hole in the side of Dean's head.  
  
"What's up with you tonight?" Sam says at length.  
  
"I'm driving this piece of shit car, that's what's wrong with me."  
  
It's in fourth gear and it still sounds like it's in first. If it didn't mean certain death, or critical injury, he'd ram the car straight into a fucking concrete wall. If it weren't for the fact Cas’s still incommunicado (not that Dean's actually tried to remedy this), Dean might've _actually_ rammed the car into a concrete wall by now. On sheer principle alone. He wonders what kind of insurance rental companies have.  
  
He glances over at Sam, sees him still staring with a constipated frown. Dean says, "Baby's not Baby, and Bewitched isn't about to fix it any time soon ‘cause—surprise, surprise—he _can’t_."  
  
"So, what? We're stuck with human Baby? For how long?"  
  
"Hell if I know, Sam." Dean kills the ignition and exits the Hyundai. He does not kick the fender.  
  
What well and truly pisses Dean off, though, is the unexpected relief he'd felt wash over him when Stiles had said it. That Baby might not turn back for another three months, maybe more.  
  
So what Dean wants right now is to have a shower, and get some shuteye, and maybe he'll wake up tomorrow, and it'll all have been a terrible, terrible dream. Or worse, he'll wake up tomorrow only to find Gabriel three inches from his face with a lopsided smirk and a snap of fingers.  
  
What Dean gets is altogether different, yet somehow completely in line with the way events usually unfold in his life.  
  
Baby's half-slouching on Dean's bed, with greasy slices of pizza as equally slouched over the cardboard box they came in. There's also a small tower of sticky-looking barbecue sauce smeared chicken wing carcasses littering not only the box, but the sheets as well. Sheets Baby has been using to wipe his hands off on, in lieu of tissues. Or literally _anything else_.  
  
Baby looks up from the laptop perched on his thighs and that? That is a shit-eating grin of defiance plastered to his face.  
  
"What the actual hell?" Dean growls. He swears he hears Sam stifle laughter by way of a cough. He thinks this is long overdue justice.  
  
"You said I couldn't leave, which I didn't," is Baby's defense.  
  
"It's like leaving a dog all alone while you're at work," Sam muses. "You come home to chewed up furniture and everything. Lack of stimulation, boredom, frustration..."  
  
Dean turns from looking at Sam—who's still way too amused—to Baby. "Are you telling me this is all about you wanting to tag along just so you can get yourself killed?"  
  
"Pretty much, yeah."  
  
Dean rubs a hand over his face, murmuring, " _You've got to be fucking kidding me_ ,” into his hands.  
  
Baby picks up a slice of pizza, takes a bite, and says nonchalantly, "I'm not above escalating every time you guys leave me alone."  
  
"This isn't funny, Sam."  
  
"But it is, it so totally is.”  
  
-  
  
Dean picks Stiles up at his house ("My dad's at work, so you can unclench, I'm not stupid"), and has been talking since. Dean doesn't know if Stiles is nervous or just inherently annoying.  
  
They park the rental in the alley behind the building. The construction's been halted for almost six months now, according to Stiles, leaving the building empty for the most part. One issue after the other, stalling developments months at a time. The usual. At least it's not built on an ancient burial ground.  
  
"They wanna convert it into those moronically expensive studio apartments," Stiles scoffs. "Like there's people around here who's actually gonna pay for that. I mean, take one look at our violent crime statistics, and the death rates... Who in their right freaking mind would _willingly_ move to Beacon Hills?" Stiles unfolds himself and exits the car before Dean's even killed the engine. He gestures expansively at the building.  
  
Baby follows from the backseat, stretching his long limbs. Stiles had called dibs. Dean wasn't about to argue on dibs. Just like Dean had given up arguing with Baby about this whole tagging along thing pretty quick. He also didn't doubt it for a second when Baby said he wasn't above escalating. Dean doesn't need to know how far that'd end up going.  
  
He lingers behind on the pretense of finding the flashlight stowed away in the glove compartment. It's still light out, but it's not likely there'll be working electricity inside. And most of the windows are covered, whether to protect the glass or due to lack of glass is anybody's guess.  
  
"So how long since the omega stopped squatting here?" Dean asks, getting out his lock pick when Stiles tries the door. Stiles doesn't protest, just steps aside even though he can probably open the door with a flick of his wrist.  
  
"Almost two months ago. Scott and Erica got a pretty good scent here when we first started looking into it," Stiles says.  
  
The door opens, and Dean's lips curl into a smug little smile.  
  
Stiles gives him a considering look, says, "You know this is a bullshit errand, right? I mean, the scent's been gone for weeks, we're not gonna find anything new here."  
  
"Beats sitting on your ass back at the loft though, don't it?" Dean counters.  
  
-  
  
Dean gives Baby a hunting knife, to be on the safe side. Baby considers it, feels its weight in his hand, then does a tight little twirl with it. It's not a jaw-dropping, sophisticated move, but it speaks of familiarity.  
  
Nothing about Baby makes sense, his pools of knowledge. Dean tries not to think about it, because he doesn't need the headache, but the way Baby twirls the knife... It reminds Dean of how Cas handles angel blades. The swift, sure manipulation. Is like the more Baby hangs around, the more human he becomes.  
  
"You're just full of surprises, huh?" At least Dean won't have to worry about Baby, if shit hits the fan tonight.  
  
Baby's eyebrows dance in response. He starts wandering.  
  
Dean, though? Dean's a little worried about himself.  
  
Nothing out of the ordinary turns up on the first floor. There's plaster dust, the skeletons of walls, some abandoned tools here and there, crumpled sheets of plastic. Grime, puddles of water. Pretty much exactly what you'd expect to find.  
  
It only takes fifteen minutes to search the first floor.  
  
On the second floor is the omega's nest, as apt a description as any. It sure looks like a nest. So while Stiles takes a call from Scott, Dean pokes through the nest with the splintered remains of a four-by-four.  
  
Disgusting is putting it mildly. It's _moist_ ; a mixture of torn fabrics, a long-forgotten down-jacket, scrunched up and folded newspapers, dried blood, parts of a decomposing cat. Dean does not hurl. Baby finds five-fingered scratches and more dried blood on the floor in a corner, including a shrivelled yet intact human nail.  
  
Baby fits his fingers into the messy grooves; something flickers across his face.  
  
"Scott says they've caught a strong, pretty fresh scent in the Preserve," Stiles says when he returns from the phone call. Seeing where Baby's still crouching, he says, "We thought maybe the omega'd gotten cornered by somebody. But there's nothing indicating a fight, and there would've been a death-match otherwise, so. Derek thinks they were just... losing it. Hallucinating, maybe. Going feral isn't just about forgetting who you are, or losing touch with your human parts." Stiles's voice goes quiet. His gaze fixes on where Baby's fingertips are lightly dragging along the scratch marks, feeling out the grooves in the concrete. "Don't bother with the nail. It's dead tissue. If stale blood won't work, the nail won't, either."  
  
"And that doesn't seem suspicious to you?" Dean asks.  
  
Stiles shrugs. "Not necessarily. Any stale body part or fluid is always less potent in a tracking spell. He might have protection. A lot of packs don't have emissaries, but they might have amulets or things like that, made by a witch or a coven. A sort of quid pro quo; you protect us, we protect you kinda deal without all the politics and shit. There's probably more packs like that than packs _with_ emissaries. But packs with emissaries are always going to be stronger than packs without. And there's no, like, guarantee for either party in a quid pro quo agreement, so. More risk."  
  
Dean can't claim any extensive knowledge of werewolves except the basics. How to kill them, omegas are weakest, alphas strongest. Don't try taking on a whole pack by yourself, eliminate the alpha first if you're stupid enough to try it anyway. If he was a bigger man, Dean would admit he's just a smidgen impressed.  
  
"Would the protection, or whatever, the omega has still work if he's exiled from his pack?" Dean asks.  
  
"Yeah, 'cause it doesn't draw on the pack's or the coven's power.” Stiles says it like it should be obvious.  
  
The last three floors they merely sweep over. There's nothing there. Dean didn't actually expect there to be—Stiles definitely didn’t—but he'd wanted to check it, anyway. Try to understand it, maybe. Then again, how do you get into the same mindset as a feral werewolf?  
  
It's close to dusk by the time they return to the first floor.  
  
Despite a lack of supernaturally fine-tuned instincts, Dean realizes something's not right a whole .09 seconds before Stiles does.  
  
Which is just enough time for Dean to pull out his gun with one hand and a pouch of wolfsbane with the other. Unfortunately, the omega's complete lack of self-preservation has him launching himself at Dean without hesitating. He manages a scratch across Dean's forehead and eyebrow. The scratches are shallow, but it doesn't stop them from stinging like hell, and obscuring Dean's vision.  
  
The omega digs his claws into Dean's arm, and Dean's aim goes south, managing only a flesh-wound shot. The omega drags has claws down the back of Dean's arm, forcing him to drop the pouch of wolfsbane no matter how much he doesn't want to.  
  
Stiles makes an explosive hand gesture, like he's throwing the omega to the side from afar. Dean would've been pretty damn impressed _and_ willing to admit it out loud, if it weren't for the fact the omega only stumbles a couple of steps, and the color drains from Stiles's face. Dean doesn't actually hear it over the bone-chilling growl of the omega, but he's still pretty sure Stiles says, " _Oh holy fucking shit_.”  
  
Dean scrambles for the pouch of wolfsbane—they really should get some kind of bungee for their shit—but the omega is only distracted for a second by Stiles's attempt to throw him. The werewolf is gearing up to launch at Dean again, and it'll be a clean kill this time.  
  
The omega goes low, grabbing one of Dean's ankles. He pulls hard enough to not only have Dean land on his back, the air going out of his lungs and making him draw in air desperately a second later; something in Dean's ankle definitely gets strained enough for Dean to clench his teeth together in pain when it finally registers through the adrenaline.  
  
"The fuck're you doing?! _Shoot him!_ “ Stiles yells, advancing, trying to throw the omega again. Baby's coming from the side, out of literal left-field. Baby's got the knife hefted, ready to drive it down into the omega's shoulder, maybe severing the carotid in the process.  
  
It's all or nothing.  
  
The omega stumbles again as a result of Stiles's attack, allowing Baby to plunge the knife deep into the omega's shoulder just as he's about to grab Dean by the throat.  
  
Baby gets thrown clear across the room by an invisible force. He goes through a half-finished plaster wall, and barely avoids getting turned into beef tartar by the omega.  
  
Again, it leaves the omega distracted only for a moment, but with Baby out of sight, and Dean halfway incapacitated, Stiles is a sitting duck.  
  
" _Fuck_." It's a heartfelt whisper. Stiles's hands flail helplessly, or that's what it looks like until Dean realizes Stiles is trying to keep the omega at bay. He's still moving forward, growl gone low, like a deep vibration Dean's lizard brain is ready to get the fuck away from. The omega's movements are jerky, painful-looking, but he's still making progress.  
  
It's a half crawl, half drag along the concrete floor, like running a cheese-grater very slowly over your skin. The moment Dean manages to reach the wolfsbane, though, he rolls over onto his back and yells, "Stiles!" The pouch makes a beautiful arc in the air, proving that Dean's fucked up brand of luck holds. His gun is within stretching distance, too, and he empties his clip into the omega's back.  
  
Stiles fumbles the bag open, and blows its contents in the omega's face.  
  
The omega howls. He stumbles like a drunk man, clawing at his own face. Dean is sure the werewolf is gonna go down; he's pumped to the fucking brim with wolfsbane, and even when the shit doesn't hit with instant death, the omega should be lying on the floor throwing his guts up any moment now.  
  
So when the omega convulses, appearing for a moment like the Hunchback of Notre Dame getting electrocuted, Dean almost lies back down, and just breathes. Nothing's ever this easy, though.  
  
The omega has the _audacity_ to draw himself into his full, wiry length.  
  
Dean's pretty fucking pissed off.  
  
"Oh my fucking _God_ why won't you _die_?!” Stiles yells when the omega starts charging towards him again. Stiles sounds on the verge of hysterics. Dean can't really blame him.  
  
Dean tries to get to his feet, pulling a smaller and less efficient knife out of a sheath at his uninjured ankle.  
  
Stiles throws himself to the side, hitting his head on an errant piece of chipped concrete. It doesn't stop him from digging frantically through his jeans pocket only to pull a vial out of it. It breaks against the floor under the force of his palm. A tight circle of shimmery, dark dust settles around him. The omega stumbles back, like he hits an invisible wall.  
  
Dean's managed to get up on one knee and is holding the knife out in front of him. His eyesight is blurry. The adrenaline is about to peak.  
  
The omega only spares him a glance before taking off through one of the plastic-sheeted windows.  
  
It's an unstable ascent, but Dean manages both his feet underneath him. He cradles his arm, uses the shirt sleeve of his other to wipe some of the blood from his face. His eyesight's still a little blurry, but it helps. "Hey, wonder kid, you ok?" He makes his way over to Stiles, who remains prone on the floor. He does give a single thumbs up in response, after half a beat.  
  
"Baby? Baby, you ok?" Dean calls out. The words _please don't be dead_ , rattle around in his head.  
  
"I'm fine," Baby says, entering the room with a bloody nose and copious amounts of plaster on his clothes, and in his hair. There's a few superficial scrapes and bruises on his arms, his chin and cheek. He shakes some of the plaster out of his hair.  
  
"Sorry 'bout that," Stiles says from the floor. "I aimed for the pile of cardboard."  
  
Baby shrugs. "I live, so all's forgiven." The lopsided smile he tries on turns into a grimace. That's a broken nose, then.  
  
"What the _fuck_ was that?" Dean asks, extending a hand to help Stiles up.  
  
Stiles looks confused for a moment. "What? Oh, right, yeah, no, uh..." He reaches out to grab Dean's hand, pulling back again with a wince before giving it another shot. Dean isn't successful in being gentle when he pulls Stiles up, but he tires. "Yeah, he's definitely not an omega."  
  
"How many fingers am I holding up?" Dean asks.  
  
"What? Why? Three?"  
  
"Even I could tell he's a werewolf. Judging by the overall hobo chic thing he had going, I'm taking it he doesn't have a pack, so."  
  
"How many fingers am _I_ holding up?" Stiles asks, and flips Dean the bird. He's still somewhat unbalanced which ruins the overall effect of it. He pivots a turn on his heel. "I didn't say he's not a werewolf, he's just not... exactly an omega. Could we, maybe, you know, have this conversation in the car on our way to the loft? 'Cause I'm pretty sure I'm this close to going into shock, or having a panic attack, or _something_. And Scott's gonna be calling me in less than five minutes, so... this way I can explain it to both of you at the same time. While horizontal."  
  
"Fine. I can't drive, though." Dean pointing to his legs. He's favoring the hell out of his right one.  
  
"Baby can drive." Stiles says it with conviction, gesturing in some random direction behind himself. He stops by the stairs, staring down them like he's contemplating triple-lindying or levitating as a way of descending.  
  
"Sure, I can drive," Baby replies. He wipes his nose on his leather jacket. It doesn't make much of a difference. If anything, it just makes his face look bloodier. Like he shoved half of it into somebody's body cavity. "No, seriously, I _can_ drive," Baby assures at Dean's vaguely disturbed facial expression.  
  
  
**6.5**  
It feels like he's broken a rib. Stiles has never actually experienced a broken rib before, and he's probably just being fatalistic, but it _hurts_. It's likely a combination of throwing himself on the floor, and straining a muscle somewhere in the small of his back. Whatever it is, existing hurts. He numbs the pain in his hand instead of his back, though. He can't do both at once, not when they're both so painful.  
  
The great thing about flannel shirts, is you can use them to wipe up blood. Dean uses his own to get the majority of the blood off his face, then uses the same shirt to wrap up his arm. He seals it up with some duct-tape pulled out of the glove compartment.  
  
They're barely a block away from the building when Stiles's phone rings.  
  
"Aw, fuck. We're not even in May yet," Stiles grumbles. It's the third cracked phone screen so far this year. The screen barely responds when he drags a finger across it. It ends up not mattering when the phone clatters between the door and the seat after glancing off the bridge of his nose. Today sucks.  
  
Stiles wriggles his fingers on the center console, says, "Hey, let me borrow your phone. I gotta call Scott."  
  
"Pick a fucking station and stick to it," Dean says to Baby, handing over his phone to Stiles.  
  
"Driver picks the tunes," Baby says and serenely continues to skip through the radio stations.  
  
Scott picks up on the first ring, and Stiles can't quite process the haphazard tumult of "Dude, did you just die?!"  
  
"You're on speaker, man," Stiles says. He shifts his legs in an attempt to stretch them out, but all it does is press his Chucks up against the window. A sharp shot of pain goes up his right side.  
  
" _Dude, did you just die?!_ “ Scott yells.  
  
"No, I didn't mean 'talk louder', I meant—never mind. And no, I didn't die. I don't think I died, anyway. Did I die?" Stiles asks, raising his head up off the upholstery. Ow.  
  
By the time Dean realizes Stiles is asking him, Stiles is already barreling on.  
  
"We're fine. More or less. So on to bigger and greater things; we're definitely hunting an omega, but we're also kinda not."  
  
"What? You saw it? Wait, were we questioning it being an omega? Is _that_ what that was? Stiles, it seriously felt like touch and go for a second there. How the hell could an omega do enough damage for that?"  
  
"It can't, that's the thing, Scott. I should've been able to hold him off, no problem. Scott, I think I know what we're dealing with, and you're gonna like it even less than Blue Steel over here." Stiles elbows the back of Dean's seat, making Dean twist around to look at him. Stiles meets his gaze. "It's a witch, Scott."  
  
Dean murmurs, _'fucking witches’_ at about the same time Scott says, "Fuck, Stiles."  
  
"I think it's about to get a whole lot worse, but I'm only like 98 percent sure. Is Lydia there?"  
  
"Yeah, just give her a sec. Derek's still out searching the Preserve with the rest, by the way."  
  
"The scent trail's probably planted." Stiles doesn't want to think about what this might imply. At least, he doesn't want to think about it _yet_.  
  
"Stiles." Lydia sounds relieved. "It's a tethering spell, isn't it?"  
  
Stiles looks away from Dean and closes his eyes against the gray ceiling of the car. It's been more than a few years now since he fell out of love with Lydia, but man, he loves her more now than he ever did before. "I guess if both of us jump to the worst possible conclusion, it's probably the right one."  
  
"It might just be we're both eternally pessimistic about life," Lydia says. "I'll try and dig up as much as I can. Will you be back soon? Are you coming back to the loft?"  
  
"Yeah." Stiles raises his head slightly again to look out the window. They're not so far out. He glances at Dean's bloody shirt working overtime as sling and gauze. Looks at his own palm. Stiles won't be able to dull the pain much longer. It's starting to turn into a throbbing burn. "We'll be there in about ten. Might wanna have the first-aid kit ready. Also, we've got a third Winchester to deal with."  
  
Lydia's silent for a beat, then she says, like someone resigned to their lot in life, "Of course we do."  
  
Once they reach the building, both Stiles and Dean are dragging themselves with varying degrees of effort to the elevator with Baby's help. Baby's faring pretty well, all things considered. He's got balled up tissues shoved up each nostril, which can't be comfortable considering the crooked set of his nose. Dean would've snapped it back into place, but Sam's better with noses than he is.  
  
"I can't believe you thought to bring wolfsbane and I didn't," Stiles says, gingerly leaning against the far wall. He closes his eyes against the twinge of pain. "Thanks."  
  
You can't really be a stickler for rules and agreements when breaking them is what saves your ass.  
  
Dean grunts in response.  
  
  
**7.0**  
" _Dean._ " The first words to come out of Sam's mouth the moment Dean enters the loft. It's a familiar song.  
  
"Hey, easy with the merchandise, man." Dean shies away from Sam, but not before giving him a slap on the back, a one-armed hug. Dean is acutely aware of the redhead's eyes on them. Lydia. Her gaze sweeps over Baby and onto Stiles.  
  
"What did you do to your hand?" She takes Stiles's hand in hers. Derek comes swooping in, too. Dean wouldn't think Stiles would take to being coddled (and judging by the brief grimace on his face Dean's not wrong), but Stiles lets it happen anyway. Too tired, and in enough pain to let them have at it.  
  
"And who's this?" Lydia adds, side-eyeing Baby.  
  
"It's our cousin. Far removed," Dean says before Baby can open his mouth.  
  
"We're babysitting," Sam adds.  
  
Baby gives Sam a dark look but keeps quiet.  
  
"So I should probably come up with something better than glass to keep the mountain ash in," Stiles says, bringing the attention away from Baby again. "Since, you know, removing that fucking stopper thing in the middle of being attacked by a rabid ‘wolf is not easy." He leans against Derek, who's hand is on the back of Stiles's neck, and his voice trails off.  
  
There's tendrils of black crawling along the inside of Derek's veins.  
  
Now _this_ is new. Dean would've been a little more apprehensive if it weren't for the fact Stiles leans his entire body into Derek, back to chest, while Lydia continues to inspect Stiles’s hand. The level of intimacy makes Dean a little uncomfortable.  
  
"Some of these shards are sitting fairly deep, Stiles. I think you'll have to go to the hospital. Deaton isn't back for another four days," Lydia says, thwarting whatever protest Stiles was about to make.  
  
"Mountain ash?" Sam repeats, pausing briefly in his own inspection of Baby's nose. He's still got his hand cupping Baby's face, thumbs hovering over his cheeks. Baby doesn't look bothered.  
  
"Mountain ash is awesome," Stiles says, sounding drugged. Derek's hand is still on the side of his neck, but the black veins are gone. "Hey, Erica, could you get one of the vials from my bag?"  
  
Stiles unstops it with his teeth, accidentally scraping the dull glass against his gums. He removes himself from Derek to the kitchen bench, the rest following suit.  
  
He grabs a teaspoon, puts it on the bench. Pinching some of the ash between his fingers, he drizzles it above the spoon. Instead of behaving like the laws of physics would have you believe, the ash forms a perfect circle around the spoon.  
  
"You're better off protecting yourself, like, casting a circle around yourself or whatever, than trying to trap something that's moving. As awesome as mountain ash is, and magic is magic, physics are still kinda a thing." Stiles sounds amused as he says it, even though the bone-deep exhaustion in his eyes are starting to betray him.  
  
Dean suspects there's a good story there, somewhere.  
  
Isaac reaches out his hand to grab the spoon, but an invisible wall stops him, just like it'd stopped the omega. He flattens his palm against the dome before letting his hand fall to the bench.  
  
Sam looks enraptured. Big Bird Nerd.  
  
"So it's kind of like salt, or goofer dust?" Sam touches the tiny circle of ash, easily breaking it with his fingertips.  
  
"Kinda, yeah," Stiles agrees, wincing a little and lilting to the side. Only Derek and Lydia seem to notice aside from Dean. They both frown. "More versatile, though. I think."  
  
"As _awesome_ as all this is—" Dean breaks from the group and makes his way to the dining table. It's not covered in flowers this time; it's papers and books, in several different languages, and an extra reading lamp with light so bright you could cook an egg under it. “—I need a pair of scissors, a needle, and some kinda thread. Unflavored dental floss works."  
  
If Cas was there, he could've just angel-magicked all three of them back into shape, no stitches needed. _And who's fault is it he's not here?_ Shut up.  
  
Sam snaps Baby's nose back into place—there's some colorful swearing, Dean's proud—and Stiles settles down on a kitchen stool, Derek's body obscuring him. The rest of the pack, including Scott, meanders back to the couches and chairs in the living-room. Baby vacillates for a moment then joins the pack.  
  
A strange atmosphere rolls over the loft like fog coming in from the shorelines. Dean manages to curb his instinct to jump when Lydia's suddenly standing in front of him with a first-aid kit in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. Man, Dean is fucking beat if a human in three-inch heels on panelled floor can get the drop on him. She swats away his hand when he reaches for the scissors.  
  
"Let's stitch you up," she says.  
  
"I'm fine doing it myself, princess."  
  
"I'm sure you are, but I need practice, and you're human which means two things: you don't heal within five minutes, and you're susceptible to infection. Omega werewolves who, most likely, do not observe proper personal hygiene, if any hygiene, are likely to carry things worse than rabies, and there's not a lot worse than rabies. So, let me stitch you up," Lydia repeats, beckoning for Dean to remove the shirt-sling around his neck.  
  
"Pretty sure stitching me up ain't gonna cure me if I've got rabies," he says because he wants to argue, but he's also fucking done with this day, so... If Red wants to play doctor, well. Who is he to deny her. He removes the sling and cautiously rests his arm on the table.  
  
"Thank you."  
  
Lydia is surprisingly gentle.  
  
She hands him a wet cloth so he can get the blood off his face. She says he won't need stitches on his forehead; just some butterfly bands.  
  
She cuts off the tape and undoes the rest of the shirt, carefully lifts his arm to take a good look at the wounds before she starts meticulously cleaning them with boiled water and antiseptics. Dean tries to keep his grumbling to a minimum. Some whiskey'd hit the spot right now.  
  
He shouldn't complain, though. This is practically five star medical treatment compared to what he and Sam usually make do with. Hell, he'll probably get an infection because it's _too_ clean.  
  
"Is learning how to stitch compulsory around these parts?" Dean asks at length.  
  
"You know, that might be a good idea," Lydia says airily. She shifts the blinding light of the lamp and threads the needle on the first try. When the needle breaks his skin, Dean does let out a small grumble. Lydia glances up at him before continuing.  
  
When she gets halfway, Dean gets a proper look at the finished stitches. They're not perfect by any means, but they're not something to turn your nose up at either. They're better than what Dean or Sam could do. Maybe she's just got more patience, a smidgen more dexterity.  
  
"So who taught you how to stitch?"  
  
"Allison." Lydia clears her throat. "The basics, anyway."  
  
"Argent's daughter," Dean says. He doesn't miss the way Lydia's entire body language goes tauter. Turns more defensive, rather than cautious or impassive. "I'm sorry," he adds gruffly.  
  
"So is everyone else." Lydia cuts the thread, placing the needle on the table. She sends a bottle of prescription painkillers Dean's way.  
  
Judging by the sound the bottle makes when it hits his lap, there's about five or six pills left. All these kids aren't superhuman, after all.  
  
"Try to not rub any dirt into it anytime soon, hm?"  
  
If Lydia wasn't wearing heels, Dean's pretty sure she'd be taking the stairs to the second floor three steps at a time. Stiles's eyes follow her from the kitchen, but the rest of him doesn't. He meets Dean's gaze for a split second.  
  
The strange atmosphere has eased, but it's not gone. It's the low hum of conversation masking it.  
  
Dean exchanges a few words with Sam, tries to remember how the omega fought when Boyd asks; if it was just feral, mindless attacks or tactics. Derek and Stiles are still in the kitchen, and though Dean can only see the set of Derek's shoulders and glimpses of Stiles's expression, he's pretty sure it's not a fun conversation they're having.  
  
Like when couples argue in public, among friends, trying to hide the fact they're having an argument and only making it ten times more obvious.  
  
To be fair, Dean only notices because the kitchen is in the middle of his sightline, and the pack doesn't seem to be heeding them any attention. That is, no-one but Dean is paying any attention until the volume of Stiles's voice rises considerably.  
  
" _You've gotta stop trying to control me and telling me how I feel!_ “  
  
"I'm not trying to control you! I'm trying to keep you safe, 'cause you sure as hell aren't trying!" Derek yells back.  
  
Stiles gets off the stool, unsteadily, and says, "You're such a fucking _hypocrite_!”  
  
"You're _pack_!”  
  
Stiles looks for a moment like he's about to have a stroke, then, " _That's not what this is about oh my fucking god!_ “  
  
The room goes eerily quiet.  
  
From what Dean can tell, this is the moment Derek shuts down. Stiles is tightly wound enough he might ping off into the stratosphere at any moment.  
  
There's a very long pause.  
  
They stare at each other.  
  
Dean feels both supremely uncomfortable and shamelessly intrigued.  
  
The spell is broken when Stiles throws his hands out, making a loud and inarticulate noise that might be anything between frustration and rage. He proceeds to leave the loft altogether. Derek's jaw works. Then the rest get very busy tidying things away and talking loudly about some school assignment or other.  
  
Dean guesses this leaves the question of what the fuck is up with the omega who's not quite an omega left unanswered for yet another couple of days.  
  
He should've just strung Stiles up by his balls when he'd had the chance.  
  
  
**7.5**  
His chest is tight.  
  
Stiles clenches and unclenches his hand. He can do this. He's not going to let this get to him.  
  
"Do _not_ ask me if I'm ok," Stiles warns the moment he sees Erica's blonde mess of hair appear like a beacon in the dark parking lot. It's the worst thing anyone can do; ask someone if they're okay when they're clearly not. It's downright sadistic.  
  
Derek's car keys jingle as Erica holds up her hands. "Wasn't gonna," she says. She watches Stiles pace in a tight rectangle. "I'm taking you to the hospital, though. Come on, no amount of repressed emotion is going to heal that."  
  
She puts a hand on her hip and doesn't look like she'll accept Stiles's sullen response of _no,_ and _I'd rather walk_.  
  
"I don't wanna talk about it," Stiles says as he gets into the passenger seat.  
  
"I'll let you stew in your own juices, no problem." Erica turns the ignition. "Let's hope we don't have to sit around and wait for three hours."  
  
"You suck."  
  
Without moving her gaze away from the exit, Erica takes Stiles's wrist in her hand and leeches away some of the pain.  
  
-  
  
It's not three hours, but close enough. The actively dying, or at risk of bleeding out if left to wait, are priority. Stiles is neither. Unfortunately.  
  
Only having to wait two hours is a blessing, really.  
  
Stiles is grateful Scott's mom isn't on call tonight. The last thing he wants is to worry Dad with a late evening visit to the ER because Stiles has had yet another (minor) brush with Death.  
  
Erica's been unusually diligent about not prying, even though Stiles knows she wants to. Instead, she's rifled through every magazine she can get her hands on, as well as some lengthy scrolling through various social medias.  
  
"I'm right, though. Right?" Stiles says at last. His gaze follows an obviously tipsy college guy with a dislocated shoulder and scraped up knees as he gets called up.  
  
"'No eavesdropping', remember?" Erica says without looking up.  
  
Stiles deadpans her, anyway. It was a new rule introduced a few months back. A rule selectively followed and enforced.  
  
"You usually are," she says, no doubt feeling Stiles's stare at her temple. "Right, that is."  
  
"I mean about Derek."  
  
"I think that's pretty obvious," Erica says. It doesn't come out sassy, which it would've normally. She looks at him and sighs. "Stiles, sweetie," she puts a hand on the side of his face. "You're both idiots."  
  
"Thank you, Erica." Stiles leans his head back and to the side so her hand falls away.  
  
She puts it on his knee instead, shifting in her seat so she can face him properly. "I don't know what it is with you two, but you both have this weird martyr complex going. Or, like, this sacrifice complex."  
  
"I'm pretty sure that's not a thing."  
  
“ _Anyway_. You both do this thing where you sacrifice yourself for other people—the ones you care about, anyway—and that's all very admirable, but you never put yourself first. I mean, Derek always puts you before himself, and a whole lot of the time the pack comes before that, too. And then _maybe_ he considers himself third, or fourth. See? You do that, too. No, no, you don't get to talk," Erica says, holding up her hand in front of Stiles's face when he opens his mouth to disagree. "I know you're all, 'fuck you guys I'm saving myself' but you're not actually like that, Stiles. You say it, but you never do it—thank you for that, by the way—so, you know. You're both idiots. But we love you." Erica adds the last like it's an afterthought.  
  
"Can I talk now?"  
  
"Only if you're not going to argue what I just said."  
  
"That's not how discussions work."  
  
"It is now. Just think it over," Erica says with a smile, gaze drifting off to the side as she gives Stiles's knee a pat. “ _Then_ we can have an in-depth and probably incredibly annoying and contradictory conversation about this later. Like tomorrow, or movie night. But not now, because you're about to get called up, and after this is all done—" She gestures at his hand, “—I'm gonna drive you home, and you're gonna get some sleep."  
  
Stiles just sinks into his chair.  
  
  
**8.0**  
It's 4 a.m. on a Saturday, and Dean wakes—as far as he can tell—for no good reason.  
  
There's nobody screaming or actively dying. Sam is snoring to his left. Dean's phone is quiet. Maybe his body's just not into getting enough sleep. Maybe it prefers being halfway to strung-out 24/7, 365 days of the year.  
  
It's nearly a week since they teamed up with the wolf-pack. It's not like that particular candle has flared with any great insights about what they're going to do about the witch that is, apparently, controlling the omega.  
  
Dean had managed to get some vague clarification on the witch-omega deal the day before, when Stiles dropped by unannounced before heading to school.  
  
Stiles had handed over a small, nondescript container and told Dean to put it on his wounds. "It'll help it heal faster," Stiles said, slowly, like he thought Dean's look of skepticism was one of incomprehension. Or stupidity, more like it.  
  
When Dean asked about the witch-omega connection, Stiles gestured expansively at his powder-blue Jeep, clearly annoyed, and said, "It's complicated, I'll explain it to everybody on Saturday, I gotta go."  
  
That hadn't felt condescending.  
  
Dean and Sam had done some research of their own, but little of what they'd found relating to witches and tethering spells had anything to do with werewolves. Or any kind of shapeshifter, really. Most of it related to tethering—controlling—humans, and some lesser demons. Or lesser witches.  
  
Dean sits up in the musty double-bed, thankful it doesn't creak when he moves.  
  
He'd slept long enough to dream, though. For a moment, he'd thought Cas was gate-crashing his dream with some urgent message, and this was what might've woken him up. But then Dean realized he'd just been _dreaming_ about Cas gate-crashing his dream with some urgent life-or-death message.  
  
Dean grabs his phone from the nightstand, thumbs through the most recent calls. Bobby, Sam, Cas. He should call Cas. He should call Cas and say he's sorry. He doesn't even remember what the argument was about, only how, even at the time, he'd thought it was utterly moronic they were having it in the first place. But Dean just couldn't shut his fucking piehole, and Castiel kept rising to the bait, and, well. Dean should call.  
  
He doesn't, obviously.  
  
Instead he slips the phone into his back pocket, glances over at Sam. Still out like a light. The cot on the floor—the kind they'll provide you with if you've got kids tagging along—sits empty. Baby's supposed to be sleeping in it. _Was_ sleeping in it last Dean checked. Maybe Baby's a sleepwalker. It'd take a lot for Dean to be surprised by anything Baby does at this point.  
  
A handful of minutes later, with a flashlight and demon knife in hand, Dean finds Baby behind the motel, sitting on the park bench table.  
  
"Thought you'd done a runner," Dean says.  
  
"You've still got your keys on you, don't you?" Baby says, turning into the single light source. His gaze flicks down to the right pocket of Dean's leather jacket. Dean instinctively checks it, and yep, the keys to the Hyundai are still there.  
  
They're not too far from the _Welcome to Beacon Hills_ sign, so there's the dense blackness of trees behind the motel and little else.  
  
It's ominous in a way nothing else can quite match. A primal fear, an ingrained respect, for the woods. The deep blue sea might rival it. Space, maybe, but it's too far-removed. Dean's not likely to have to deal with any space demons in his time. Knock on wood.  
  
He sits down next to Baby on the table, planting his feet wide apart on the bench. Baby sits with his ankles crossed, hands hidden deep in his dark brown leather jacket.  
  
It really _is_ identical to the jacket Dean had in high school. He thinks the last time he saw it he was maybe seventeen? They moved again, around that time.  
  
All of Baby's clothes look like they've been owned and used for years, showing the usual wear and tear. The cotton knit sweater is tattered, and a little too big, like a hand-me-down, from one sibling to another, a parent to a kid. It has a hole at the bottom on the left side, too. The threads have faded from countless washes. It might've been black once, not charcoal gray. Like a favorite sweater you just don't want to get rid of. It doesn't look familiar to Dean, not like the jacket. But it still matters, somehow.  
  
The jeans, too. They're too tight to be anything Dean's ever worn, but Dean can imagine a similar pair on countless women. Except Baby's has a white spot at the knee, washed-out denim so worn Baby's knee is gonna poke through any day now. The left knee, too, only not as worn; it still has a few miles to go.  
  
The boots look like John's old combat boots. Worn so much they've moulded themselves perfectly to the feet carrying them. Maybe Baby really is walking a mile in another man's shoes.  
  
Baby.  
  
Baby with the blue eyes, the messy, dirt-blond hair, the two-day stubble and bushy eyebrows, the strong jaw.  
  
Baby who looks like nothing Dean's ever imagined, who looks like nobody Dean knows, or has known; not now, not anymore. Not for an hour, or a week, or a month; not a year, or a decade.  
  
Baby who picks at the hole in his sweater, the holes at his knees, pulling at threads and threatening to undo everything.  
  
"Don't strain yourself thinking too hard," Baby says, and Dean realizes Baby's looking at him. There's an amused tilt to his mouth. "You indulging in a little 4 a.m. existentialism?"  
  
"Existentialism? Really?"  
  
Baby deadpans him. Now _this_ is an expression Dean knows well, and one that does indeed remind him of someone. No-one deadpans him quite like Sam does. Or Bobby.  
  
"Is that why _you’re_ out here?" Dean retorts.  
  
If Baby were drunk and in college right now, this could've been a pretty normal Saturday night for somebody his age.  
  
Baby grimaces at the trees and pulls his hands from his jacket. He stares at his fingers, at his nails, prompting Dean to look at them too. The single light shining a few feet away is too dim to see much.  
  
"It wasn't until recently I took on a sentient, organic form," Baby says after a few beats. He glances at Dean. "Naturally, it's lead me to ask the question, 'what does it all mean?' in all its infinite varieties. Or, I couldn't sleep, so."  
  
"You know, I think I liked you better when you couldn't talk," Dean says dryly.  
  
"That's a lie and you know it." Baby puts his hands back into the safety of his pockets. "I like it better when you don't play singalong in the car all the time."  
  
“ _You_ sing in the car all the time."  
  
"That's a symptom, not an annoying idiosyncrasy," Baby replies.  
  
"Symptom of what, exactly?" Dean asks.  
  
"You," Baby says, half a joke, half an insult. He looks away when Dean meets his eyes. A cold trickle goes down Dean’s spine, there and gone again.  
  
"Did you know trees talk to each other?" Baby says after a while. "They've got these... complex hubs and networks, kind of like social networks, like social infrastructure. They all work together, different kinds of trees, all sharing information and exchanging feedback. So they create this natural immune system, keeping the forests alive, keeping each other alive, because of this complexity, this overlapping. All the different components work together to make a viable whole. And you can even remove some of them, some of these... hubs. But if you remove too many of them it just—collapses."  
  
“You’ve really latched onto this whole existential thing, huh?”  
  
Baby scrunches up his shoulders in a shrug, leans back onto his tailbone and says, “When male honey bees climax, their testicles explode and they die.” He rolls himself onto his feet, and Dean almost misses the quirk of a smile.  
  
“Where’re you going?” Dean asks, getting up, too.  
  
 “To sleep,” Baby replies, heading in the direction of the parking lot rather than the motel room.  
  
Dean feels his jacket pocket and realizes Baby picked it as some point. It’s so quiet around here Dean can hear the central lock in the distance. He waits a minute, but the engine doesn’t start.  
  
“Jesus,” Dean murmurs. He rubs his fingers into his eyes.  
  
When he returns to the room, Sam’s awake enough to ask about Baby’s whereabouts.  
  
“Sleeping in the rental.” Dean throws his jacket over the chair. He lies down and closes his eyes immediately.  
  
 “Why?”  
  
“To be with his kin? Fuck if I know.”  
  
Sleight of hand. Dean hadn’t taught Baby that.  
  
  
**8.5**  
Stiles is pretty used to how fucked up and overall bizarre his life is, but Baby somehow manages to challenge his resigned calm, anyway.  
  
Baby enters the loft in a slow spin, mesmerized by the high ceilings. Dean follows in a much more tetchy manner.  
  
"You here to appraise the apartment? 'Cause I don't think Derek's looking to sell anytime soon," Stiles says. He moves the protective charm he's just finished into a small pouch, and starts on another one.  
  
"I'm really into architecture," Baby says, briefly glancing at Stiles before sitting down on the couch's back. He slouches.  
  
“Seriously?" Stiles asks, looking up.  
  
Baby looks like a man awaiting his sentence. He doesn't appear particularly perturbed by it, though. “No. I'm just not allowed to join in on the fun."  
  
"Yeah, 'cause getting killed is hilarious," Dean grumbles. He comes up to the kitchen counter, stops right in front of Stiles on the other side of it. "You," Dean says, all his attention on Stiles. Laser focus. ”Since this is your doing in the first place, you get to babysit."  
  
"Pun," Baby says.  
  
They both ignore him. Dean mostly because he's keeping from murdering Stiles with his bare hands through sheer force of will right now, and Baby's definitely not affecting the odds in Stiles's favor.  
  
"Okay?" Stiles replies, uncertain. "Any rules involved in that, or? No food after midnight, maybe. Don't spill water on him—"  
  
"You're a funny guy."  
  
Scott returns from the bathroom and whisks Dean off to that half-ass Wiccan store in town, _Good Vibrations_ , before Dean loses his resolve and actually murders Stiles.  
  
Which leaves Stiles alone with the personified result of a spell he (recklessly) cast on a '67 Chevy Impala. And the rest of the pack aren't set to arrive for another couple of hours.  
  
Baby meets Stiles's gaze, arms loose across his chest, and says, "You're looking a little spooked, there."  
  
"I feel like Dr Frankenstein," Stiles replies.  
  
-  
  
Stile's shoulders are starting to ache from standing hunched over the kitchen counter. But the second protection charm is almost finished. It's one of the first things he’d gotten really good at. The first really complicated one he'd made, he'd made for Lydia. She had her own protections, being a Banshee, but the protection she recieved from being part of the pack only stretched so far since she wasn't a werewolf. Stiles had since made her a much better one, but he knew she still kept the old one, hidden in a jewellery box in her nightstand.  
  
"When will the magic wear off?"  
  
Stiles almost fumbles the knife in his hand. He’d forgotten he’s not alone. "What?" Stiles says, trying to keep his voice even but it still goes a little high-pitched.  
  
"The magic, when will it wear off?" Baby repeats.  
  
Stiles looks down at the charm in his hand, about to answer, but then his mind shifts gears and he realizes what Baby's asking. Not a what, but a who.  
  
"I honestly don't know. It probably helps being around here, though."  
  
"How so?"  
  
"The Nemeton. It probably helps... stabilize the magic, I guess. Keeps it strong, equalized. That spell is, technically, a _little bit_ outside my wheelhouse. I'm kinda surprised you haven't spontaneously combusted yet, to be honest. Or gone supernova. Please don't go supernova."  
  
Baby clicks his tongue, says, "Can't make any promises."  
  
While Stiles finishes making the charm, Baby gets to wandering around the loft.  
  
He doesn't touch anything. Just looks at things, leans a little closer, maybe. Stops and stares for long, drawn-out seconds. He keeps his hands mostly in his pockets. The one time he does reach out, his hand halts for a split second, just in front of his line of sight, then he gingerly picks up the picture frame set just above eye-level on the bookshelf.  
  
It's a photo of the entire pack, just before Christmas. All of them scrunched together. You can practically see the energy of the bickering they want to engage in, the weird '9th grade picture-day' smiles. It's hilariously awkward, really. But it's so obvious, at least to Stiles, this is family. Baby looks at it for a long moment; long enough that Stiles has cleared away most of his things (at least moved them to a single, semi-tidy spot at the end of the counter), and he just quietly observes Baby.  
  
That is, until Baby catches his gaze, sharp and unexpected, and Stiles doesn’t manage to hide how it startles him.  
  
"I get to be a real boy just long enough to want it, this, to know what it is, to be alive," Baby says. "I'm living on borrowed time. I kind of... hate you, for that, I think. That seems to be what this feeling is, or my understanding of it. Or maybe not 'hate'. A strong sense of resentment?"  
  
Stiles's heart drops to his stomach. His lips part. Nothing comes out. Just stale air.  
  
Baby's lips quirk. He shakes his head, imperceptibly. His hands are in his pockets again. “I’m not here to start anything.” He lapses into silence again.  
  
A silence where you don't know if the conversation is over, if you can return to whatever you were doing prior to it. The kind of silence where anything you might do or say—anything save remaining utterly still—will be the wrong thing. Will be the thing to cause some untold disaster.  
  
Baby pulls his hands out of his pockets. Looks at them.  
  
"Do you know anything about it?" He asks at length. "About the spell? About how it works, what it does?"  
  
“Just—" Stiles clears his throat. It feels dry, suddenly sore. "Just what it says on the tin. Personification. It's old. Like—ancient. All the good ones are. Why?"  
  
Baby shakes his head again, shrugs. Then he pushes up the sleeves of his sweater.  
  
There's an expertly done tattoo of a feather on his forearm, stretching from wrist to elbow. It plays with the light shining down from above. The lines don't look like ink; it's disturbingly real when the light hits it just so. Stiles has admired it once or twice before, but the dark, blueish-green bruises on Baby's arms are ones he's never spotted before.  
  
Stiles stares at the bruises as Baby turns his arms, looking at them himself. His expression is resigned.  
  
"How did you get those?" Stiles asks under his breath. Somehow, he doesn't want to know the answer. Somehow, he's the one who put them there, surely.  
  
"I don't know. They come and go. More the former than the latter, lately." Baby unceremoniously pulls off his sweater altogether. Stiles's body instinctively grows tense when he sees the naked flesh of Baby's upper body.  
  
It's covered in bruises. Stiles thinks of Gerard.  
  
Some of the bruises are old and fading. Some are new; garish, purple-red. Some small, some large. As though someone's been using Baby for a punching bag.  
  
_I did this?_ _I_ did _this_.  
  
"Might be all the times I've gotten beat up," Baby says, fingering an especially nasty bruise on his ribcage; it looks like an inverted sunflower. "I got hit by a semi-trailer, once. Dean put me back together. In a couple of days, the bruises'll be gone again, like they were never there."  
  
Baby turns around.  
  
A Devil's trap. On his upper-back, spreading across his shoulders. A gross combination of scar tissue and black ink. Looking at it makes Stiles physically ill.  
  
Some of the skin is mottled and angry-red, other parts silky smooth and silver-white. Some pitch black, like there's nothing there, a black hole carved into the fabric of matter itself.  
  
Stiles lets out a noise he's not quite sure what means.  
  
"I'm a slice of John, a smidgen of Mary. I'm Sam, too, and quite a lot of Dean. I'm even a little bit of Cas," Baby says, pulling the sweater back on. He turns to face Stiles again, great baby-blues fixing Stiles in place. "So, naturally, I'm always in pain. I'm the worst parts, and the best parts. Dean doesn't know this. Sam doesn't know it. And I don't want them to. But you did this to me. Maybe you didn't mean to, maybe you didn't think it through, but you did this to me. So," Baby pauses, sits down on the back of the couch again. "I need you to do something else for me, now. I need you to do me a favor."  
  
Stiles is a lot like his mom. What he remembers of her, at least.  
  
She was art, and nighttime stories that never ended—they always veered off somewhere, uncharted, got too big to wrap up. _The Woman in the Magic Garden_ was his favorite. It changed every time.  
  
She was stubborn to the point it drove Dad insane sometimes. Always with dirt under her fingernails; the single, overflowing flowerbed underneath the kitchen window. She smelled like lime and baby powder.  
  
When she got angry, she got _angry_ , but it never lasted, and she never held grudges. She chewed her fingers, not her nails. Her powder-blue Jeep, her Baby Blue Shoes.  
  
Stiles is a lot like his mom, but he's got his dad, too. And Scott's somewhere in there, in nooks and crannies, forever his partner in crime; a sliver of Melissa, slipped into a safe place. He's got the _nogitsune_. Just a tiny, residual part he knows will never let go: an oil stain; tomato sauce left to soak into a white t-shirt. The black little spot on his soul, the way Deaton had put it.  
  
Deaton who hadn't been too excited when Stiles professed his desire to become an emissary.  
  
Stiles had expected some kind of positive reaction, as much as Deaton reacted visibly to anything. It'd been Deaton who'd nudged him in this direction from the start. But then the _nogitsune_ happened. That little spark in Stiles that attracted the fox spirit especially to him; the jumpstart needed to let the Void in, the juice it'd given Stiles's spark, still puttering away even now, long after the _nogitsune_ was gone.  
  
Deaton wasn't disappointed. He wasn't mad or disgusted, or whatever else Stiles felt, himself, on dark—darker, darkest—days. Deaton seemed... sad. Like this wasn't how he'd wanted Stiles to get here.  
  
"What do you want me to do?" Stiles finally asks Baby. The ‘I’ll do anything I can’ is implicit.  
  
  
**9.0**  
The magic shop is a bust.  
  
Most of it's bullshit, overpriced and useless, save for a few benign artefacts, and certain ingredients anyone with a book on botany might be able to scrounge up without failure.  
  
"Stiles said they're probably not even from Beacon Hills. The witch, I mean," Scott says, buckling back in. "Take a right at the end of the street and just follow it for eight-ten minutes."  
  
"I don't appreciate being kept out of the loop," Dean says.  
  
"You're not being kept out of the loop? Stiles hasn't said much to us, either." Scott shrugs. "For the most part, he's just been reading everything he can get his hands on, trying to figure out how that tethering spell might work. Or, you know, how we might find the witch in the first place. And Derek’s—" Scott stops himself from continuing. He makes a face at the front window shield, then turns to Dean. "Stiles'll tell us what we're dealing with tonight. He said he's pretty sure he's figured something out. I trust him."  
  
It's a simple statement, sure, but it's also a warning.  
  
Dean _still_ doesn't know much about 'wolf packs. When he'd asked Bobby about digging up some more lore on the topic, Bobby's response had been, "You'd have a better chance dropping Bigfoot with a BB gun."  
  
"Bigfoot's not real."  
  
"Exactly."  
  
But Dean _would_ have to be pretty fucking dense to not have figured out one thing about werewolves: pack loyalty runs deep.  
  
"So are you a born 'wolf?"  
  
"No. Bitten. By Derek's uncle." Scott hesitates for a second, then adds, “He's dead."  
  
"You kill him?"  
  
"No. Derek did. The first time, anyway. It didn't really take. Lydia killed him the second time around. So we cremated him, mixed in some mountain ash before burying him out in the Preserve." Scott glances over at Dean, like he's challenging him to say anything about.  
  
"That a common practice among you people?"  
  
"No. We just wanted to be on the safe side."  
  
"Sounds pretty harsh."  
  
Do werewolves have the same kind of built in attachment to their sires as vampires do? Dean wonders. Or is it only their packs, the ones they choose. Are they one and the same?  
  
Either way, Dean sure hopes resurrection isn't another well-kept werewolf secret. He can only deal with so much supernatural fuckery.  
  
They're idling at a stop sign, only a handful of minutes away from the pizza place, when Scott says, "Not all monsters do monstrous things, you know."  
  
"I'm familiar with the reasoning," Dean replies.  
  
"Derek said that once. Or, his mom did. Peter, Derek's uncle, was a bad man. A bad 'wolf. He killed a lot of people. He turned me against my will. Almost killed Lydia. We—the pack—we're not like that. We're not bad people." Although Dean isn't looking Scott's way, he can still feel Scott's puppy-dog eyes resting on the side of his face.  
  
"If we're monsters because we defend ourselves," Scott continues. "Because we kill bad people to protect the innocent ones, those who can't protect themselves, then you and your brother are bad people, too, right?"  
  
"Yeah, but Sam and me don't get all blood-lusty every time there's a full moon." Dean shifts into a lower gear as they reach the pizza place.  
  
Dean's gotten pretty good at ignoring the fact Sam's got literal demon juice flowing through his veins. Doesn't matter the apocalypse got cancelled; it's still there.  
  
-  
  
The dynamics of the pack do share quite a few similarities with Dean and Sam's dynamic; when the days get long and they need ways to entertain themselves, to stay awake, to keep from wanting to murder each other.  
  
It's what dinnertime in a big, tight-knit and lovingly dysfunctional family might be like. Everyone milling about, following their learned routines without giving it any thought, rehashing the same arguments for the nth time, the instigators and peacekeepers working in tandem.  
  
Dean can't figure out how the "My name is___" tags fit in, though.  
  
"Oh, they're leftovers from Stiles's eighteenth," Erica says upon questioning, which explains exactly nothing.  
  
Baby's name tag says, unimaginatively, Baby. There's two more underneath it, though. The second says KAZ 2Y5 (the license plate the Impala bore all through Dean's earliest childhood memories). The third says, in a distinctly more feminine hand, Dr Sexy. Dean notices a fourth, covering the almost-hole at the left knee of Baby's jeans; the tag is slightly wrinkled, but Dean's pretty sure it says, The Winchester Cousin in the same loopy handwriting. The capitalization really clinches the sarcasm.  
  
Dean isn't sure if Erica's figured it out somehow, that Baby is in fact Dean's car, or if this is some jibe at something else. Baby doesn't look like he's spilled those particular beans.  
  
Dr Sexy, though.  
  
Erica's got two stickers on her chest, both in messy pointed scrawls although penned by different hands; 'always cries during Princess Bride' and ROBIN.  
  
Whatever this naming game Erica and Baby have created is, it seems to be easing the tense, overworked atmosphere that's been steadily gnawing at everyone's nerves.  
  
Baby's in the midst of drawing a simple :) on one of the tags when he catches Dean watching him. Baby hands the tag to Erica who slaps it, hard, on Derek's chest.  
  
Baby picks up a tag and hands it over to Dean. It has the same handwriting as the old license plate number. "'Dick'?" Dean asks.  
  
"It's got three layers," Baby says, taking the tag back only to stick it to Dean's t-shirt.  
  
"Do I even want to know what the hell that's supposed to mean?"  
  
"Maybe you'll find out," Erica says, walking past with a pizza carton in her left hand and a half-eaten slice of pizza in her right. She looks over her shoulder with a wicked smirk at Baby. Baby just shrugs at Dean.  
  
Dean chooses not to dignify any of this with any kind of response.  
  
Everyone gathers around the living-room table, cramped together, spilling into each other's personal spaces like they don't have a perfectly well-proportioned dining room table right over there.  
  
They almost manage to get through the entire hoard of pizza before they start talking shop.  
  
It's not good news. It's never good news. Good news would inevitably lead to the Apocalypse, probably. So maybe, in a twisted sort of way, which is how Dean lives his life these days, bad news _is_ good news. A sign the world continues on as it's accustomed to.  
  
"So let me get this straight," Dean says, wiping pizza grease from his hands. The napkin turns nearly see-through. "This witch is stronger because they've got this omega under their control, but the omega is also stronger because of the witch?"  
  
"Pretty much, yeah," Stiles agrees.  
  
Erica shifts a little, getting a fraction closer to Boyd. "Could the witch do it to us, too?" She asks.  
  
"It's really fucking—I mean, you'd have to be really powerful, even more so as a solitary practitioner. If the witch could do that, tether a beta, we'd know it already. We'd be fucked ten ways from Sunday by now," Stiles says.  
  
"That's beautiful," Lydia says, and removes herself to the kitchen.  
  
"So how do we kill the wicked witch?" Sam asks.  
  
"This is where it gets complicated," Stiles says. He glances over at Scott, then Derek.  
  
"It's not complicated enough as is?" Dean says.  
  
"We've got to find the witch, and I think I know how we might do that, but it means we've got to _capture_ the omega, not kill it. At least not right away. You've gotta understand something, here," Stiles says, directing it solely at Dean and Sam. "Tethering spells are serious blood magic. But this, this is the kind that won't hold unless both parties consent to it. If you're lucky, in that case, it won't even take. But if you manage to do it anyway, it'll start warping, and it'll happen fast.  
  
“Which means, in this case, the omega consented to it. It's kinda similar to the tethering spell that makes me Scott's emissary. We both have autonomy, and we can both break the tether if we need to. There's this... naturally occurring symbiosis between witches and werewolves; their magic complements each other, but it doesn't mean all witches are drawn to werewolves. A pack with an emissary is stronger, just like a witch with a 'wolf pack is stronger. Which is why emissaries can't be part of covens.  
  
"Whoever this witch and omega are, their magic isn't a symbiotic thing, at least not 100 percent. It's more parasitic, for both parties. My best guess is the omega was already close to 'no point of return' feral when the witch came into the picture."  
  
"Well. This is all pretty fucked up," Dean says. "Still doesn't get us any closer to finding the omega tho', I take it?"  
  
"We can't trust scent trails, since they're obviously capable of planting them, or hiding their scents, or both even," Scott says, spreading his hands between his knees. "And Stiles won't be able to find the omega if it's got strong enough protection spells or charms."  
  
Stiles nods. "I think the omega attacked us—" Stiles gestures to Baby and Dean, “—because none of us are werewolves. My magic barely did anything to the omega. But the witch is still worried enough about us snooping around they wanna thin out the pack, if nothing else."  
  
"Removing the emissary would be a pretty sound strategic move," Sam agrees.  
  
"I see where this is going." Dean leans back in his chair, levelling his gaze on Stiles. "You wanna be bait, don't you? Lure the omega out."  
  
"The witch is going to smell that trap from miles away," Sam says.  
  
"I'm not letting you be bait, Stiles," Scott says. He gives the barest of glances at Derek who remains as stoic as ever.  
  
"I can take care of myself, man. I'm your best bet." Stiles gets up and brings the marked up map to the table. Isaac and Erica put the pizza cartons and scattering of plates on the floor so Stiles can fold out the map. "I'll just wander around here—" He circles a couple of miles wide radius where three of the killings occurred. "Sooner or later, the omega's gonna show up and try to feast on my spleen. Easy."  
  
"This is a seriously bad idea, Stiles. I mean, when does the bait thing ever actually work out for us?" Scott asks.  
  
"Buddy, when've we ever actually had a good idea? Or any idea that doesn't derail spectacularly five minutes in?"  
  
"He has a point," Boyd says. He shrugs impassively when Derek and Scott both shoot him a look.  
  
Lydia migrates back into the living-room. She stands next to the chair Baby's sitting half-folded into. Hip cocked, her hands slightly reddened from a half-hearted attempt at doing dishes, she sips her glass of water, looking at Stiles like she's trying to puzzle something together.  
  
"How can you be so sure the omega'll show, though?" Sam asks. His eyes are darting from one sticker on the map to another.  
  
"The witch's got my blood. Dean's too, probably. It's kinda like supernatural LoJack, if you know how to use it. Difficult spell to perform, but also difficult to ward against." A grin starts spreading on Stiles's face as he regards them all; like he's just handed them the answer to everything between heaven and Earth.  
  
Dean can practically pinpoint the moment Lydia figures it out.  
  
"It's blood magic," she says, and Stiles's grin only widens.  
  
Everyone's eyes shift from Stiles to Lydia. She looks at them like she can't believe they're so slow to figure it out; Dean actually feels a little bit chastised. "It's blood magic," she repeats. "The tethering spell. Blood magic doesn't return to the pool, it returns to the witch as the magic wears off, or the spell is broken. Don't you get it? Stiles can use the omega's blood to track the witch. So long as the omega is still alive, the connection between them is still there, too. The witch's magic is in him, like his is in the witch's."  
  
They're all quiet for a long moment. Scott looks around the room. "Anybody got any objections?"  
  
None of them say anything.  
  
"Ok," Scott says, nodding. "So, how do we do this?"  
  
It's a good day to die, and so on.  
  
  
**9.5**  
There's something strange about being awake at five in the morning. For an hour, everyone else ceases to exist. You're the last person on Earth.  
  
Stiles manages a few fitful hours of sleep on Derek's couch and nothing more. Boyd and Erica are sleeping in the guest room. The rest of the pack left before midnight.  
  
So Stiles sits on the floor with his back against the pillow cushions, his legs stretched out, and watches the murky beginnings of sunrise. The panes in the huge windows are imperfection; rivulets, tiny waves. The dirt doesn't help, either. Stiles can't quite imagine Derek spending time and effort cleaning those windows, at least not the outside. Stiles could probably do it, some quick-fix magic.  
  
But, for now, for an hour, Stiles is the last person on Earth.  
  
Except he's not.  
  
Derek comes down the stairs, lingers behind the couch for a moment. When Stiles doesn't acknowledge him, Derek settles down on the big, cushy chair Lydia usually commandeers. He's wearing flannel pyjama pants, a faded university t-shirt.  
  
"I want you to have a shot at a normal life," Derek says after several long beats of tense silence.  
  
Stiles finally looks at him. It's the _are you stupid_ look, patent pending.  
  
"Dude, I forfeited a normal life the moment I decided to drag Scott into the woods three years ago. I pretty much shot and sank that ship for good when I became Scott's emissary. Just 'cause I'm going to Berkley and most of the pack's staying here doesn't mean I’m—we’re—not gonna make it work somehow. It's gonna be hard, yeah, but I never choose the easy way, which I really kinda wish I did sometimes, but why break a habit now. I'm Scott's emissary. I'm the _pack’s_ emissary. I intend on being that until my literal and permanent demise. And last but not least, it's not up to you what kind of life I choose to lead."  
  
Derek shifts slightly, but his body language remains unruffled. "You've been thinking about this a lot."  
  
"Like you haven't?" Stiles shoots back.  
  
When you're the last two people on Earth, even if it's only for the next forty minutes, every difficult conversation seems... not easier, not even less heavy, but somehow more bearable.  
  
This might actually be Stiles's last day on Earth. Today might bring about his literal and permanent demise, should their reckless luck finally run out.  
  
"Is it the _nogitsune_ thing? Is it 'cause I'm a witch? I mean, with Jennifer and everything..." Stiles asks. "Is it both?"  
  
"No. Of course not." Derek's too quick to answer. It's followed by a long pause. "It bothered me, in the beginning. I didn't trust you. You were still Stiles, but there was this—slight shift, like missing a step."  
  
"That happens to you?" Stiles asks, tilting his head back and meeting Derek's hazel eyes. "Missing steps, I mean. I kinda figured, what with the whole preternatural agility, and the strength, and the speed, and I could literally go on like this for days but I don't know if I wanna stroke your ego for that long."  
  
"It happens, yes," Derek says, his expression slightly more guarded, a little confused. "If I'm tired enough."  
  
"You take all the magic out of it," Stiles says, just for something to say. He returns his gaze to his own hands. The left one is still healing. Too slowly for his liking, but what can you do.  
  
His fingernails are perfectly straight. The one on his middle-finger, on his right hand, it doesn't curl in as it grows anymore. It used to, ever since he was eleven and slammed a car door on it so hard the nail split down the middle. It did a number on the uppermost joint. Not so severe as it looked, in the long run. A little bit flattened on the one side, a little less feeling in the pad, a weirdly shaped fingerprint. It's perfect now, though. Has been, ever since he crawled out of that pile of bandages.  
  
There's a dark brown, nearly black speck right next to the pupil of his left eye, too. That didn't used to be there, or he's pretty sure it didn't, anyway. He's still got the scar under his knee from the time he hit some spilt pebbles with his skateboard, and a large stone embedded itself in the flesh when he fell. A flying finish.  
  
He hasn't told anyone about these missing pieces. Not even Scott. If anyone's noticed, no-one's said anything. The _oni_ gave Stiles the all clear, after all. _Self_. He still has that scar, too.  
  
"I don't have a built-in bullshit detector like you guys, you know," Stiles says at length.  
  
"I'm not lying," Derek replies. His expression is opening up again. Stiles is used to it, almost takes it for granted, now; the lack of continuous, unrelenting broodiness and clenched teeth. He takes it a little less— _a lot_ less—for granted when Derek smiles, those big, all teeth grins; the antithesis to bared fangs, and inhuman growls, and rage. Or dark, sticky grief. Stiles is familiar with that, too.  
  
"I don't know if that's better or worse," Stiles says. "Not the part where you're not lying, but the part where it's not the _nogitsune_ thing, and it's not the witch thing, because that means it's a Stiles thing, and I could understand the _nogitsune_ , or the witch thing, I guess, but it's not any of those, then it's the part where it's just me. I'm the problem."  
  
"You're not the problem. You're not _a_ problem, period."  
  
Stiles wants to argue this, though. He always does. But he thinks if he _doesn't say something_ , Derek will. And Stiles doesn't know if he actually wants to hear it, anymore. If it's not better to just crack some joke, dip it in sarcasm, pave it over with three-hundred pounds of cement, and denial, and act like he hasn't been trying to get Derek to say something, to say this except _not_ , for nearly a year now.  
  
Derek scratches at his hairline, takes a deep breath and leans forward in his chair. "You're going to college in a couple of months. You'll meet new people, get new friends, fall in love, whatever. Maybe they'll be 'wolves, too. Or witches, banshees, _kitsune_ , who knows. Maybe they'll be human. It doesn't matter. Everything will change, regardless of whether you think it will or not, whether you want it to or not. And you're right, it's not up to me to choose what kind of life you lead, but if you've got a chance at something normal—"  
  
"Did everything change when you went to college? Did it?"  
  
"It's not the same—"  
  
"No, I know that. Because of the fire, moving to New York, Laura, not dealing with the grief; I get it, I know, I remember. But did everything change? Did _anything_ change?"  
  
Derek sighs, spreads his hands in a futile gesture. "Some things."  
  
"I'm not—I don't want to push you into anything. I just... want some kind of answer, I guess. Clarification? Closure? 'Cause I know I'm not a bullshit detector, but the rest of you guys are, and I know I'm not delusional since I've got several of them breathing down my neck half the time, and I know you do, too, so. I know you like me," Stiles says, and immediately regrets how grade school it sounds. It doesn't stop him from barreling on. "I know you know I like you, too."  
  
"It won't end well," Derek says.  
  
"So what if it doesn't?"  
  
"This is _my_ pack, too, Stiles. I can't afford to lose them any more than I can afford to lose you."  
  
"You know," Stiles says, turning his head back to the imperfect window panes, the sunrise. They're the last two people on Earth for another fifteen, maybe ten minutes. And Stiles gets it. The fact he hadn't put it together earlier makes him want to face-palm into the business end of a meat-grinder, but he gets it. "Considering how often we almost die, like, _literally_ , it sounds kinda epically moronic not to do something just because it might end. That's all we ever do. As a pack, as individuals. Do shit, hope it doesn't end bad, knowing it might. But I wasn't lying, either," Stiles says.  
  
He gets to his feet. It's quite an effort. His legs are stiff, the joints in his hips feel like they've run out of oil, and he gets a little dizzy. "I really don't want to push you into anything," he says.  
  
He leaves Derek in the living-room, closes the door to the bathroom, turns the shower on full blast.  
  
-  
  
It's almost forty minutes later when Stiles finally returns to dry land. He's got to wear yesterday's clothes which makes him feel kinda icky even though they're not _dirty_ as such.  
  
When he steps into the hallway, Derek’s walking toward him with a sandwich.  
  
"If we don't die," Derek says, handing the sandwich to Stiles. "We'll do something. Together. Go out."  
  
Stiles glances at the sandwich and back to Derek. Stiles narrows his eyes. Takes a bite; it's got a thick spread of butter on each slice with peach marmalade smushed between. It's kind of in his top five favorites. "What's up with the change of heart?" Stiles says, finally.  
  
"Let's survive first," Derek says. "We can talk about it later."  
  
"On our date?"  
  
"That's heavy for a first date," Derek says, not quite able to hide the twitch at the corners of his lips.  
  
"If you die just to get out of this..." Stiles takes another bite of his sandwich before pointing it at Derek. It gapes slightly, sticky marmalade strings connecting the two pieces of bread.  
  
Derek snorts.  
  
  
**10.0**  
You don't spend a lot of time questioning your life choices when all of them are terrible. Or at best, 'not so good'.  
  
Sam's off... somewhere. Dean isn't sure. He's not worried, though. It's not that kind of uncertainty.  
  
Sam hasn't quite been himself since they kiboshed the Apocalypse. Being possessed by Satan himself, however briefly, didn't do Sam any favors. They're lucky they managed to cram only Lucifer back into the cage.  
  
Sam hasn't been doing anything _evil_ or _suspicious_. He just seems... lesser. Like his edges have been worn down, clipped. He's still Sam, most of the time, but there are moments where he just disappears, like he leaves his body altogether, just checks out. He hides it well enough. That's what Sam's always done: hidden things.  
  
Dean got Cas to check Sam out, while he was sleeping. Just some angel magic. Still probably not Dean's place, still a violation. But he couldn't handle it anymore, thinking something was wrong with Sam.  
  
But there wasn't anything wrong with Sam. Nothing supernatural anyway.  
  
_Dad's on a hunting trip, and he hasn't been home in a few days._  
  
No, there's no point dwelling on your shitty life choices. Especially not when you have liquor to soothe your soul.  
  
Dean takes a large swig, barely offering Baby a glance when he comes back into the motel room. He's carrying spoils from the vending machine, and deposits them on the round table. Picking up a Snickers bar, Baby sits himself down on the edge of the table.  
  
"I can't imagine, like, you ever going back to you being a car again. It's just—it's too fucking weird, man."  
  
Baby snorts, picking a piece of stray wrapper off the candy. "I'm sure you'll live. Are you drunk?"  
  
"No," Dean says. He frowns at the bottle, takes another swig, then points the bottle at Baby. "But I'm not entirely sober, either."  
  
"You think that's a good idea, getting drunk before the big showdown tomorrow? 'Cause I'm pretty sure the 'wolves won't hesitate straight up murdering you if Stiles gets hurt," Baby says.  
  
"Ye of little faith," Dean murmurs against the bottle's lip.  
  
It's not a very good plan, no matter how you twist and turn it. If Stiles gets hurts, it's not going to be because of a single, possible event or action or individual.  
  
It's a very simple plan, though.  
  
If you just ignore all the variables—the known _and_ unknown—it sounds doable. Quitting while you're ahead has never really been an option, so why start questioning it now.  
  
"I can practically _hear_ your cynicism," Baby says. He crumples up the candy wrapper and moves over to where Dean sits on the bed. "Give me your hand." Baby proffers his own, palm up.  
  
"You Aladdin all of a sudden?"  
  
"Makes you Jasmine, does it?"  
  
Dean makes a face. Baby's hand twitches. Gingerly, Dean puts his hand in Baby's, his other still holding onto the bottle by its neck.  
  
Baby pulls Dean up off the bed. Baby pulls him closer and laughs; it's loud in the dead quiet. "You look a little freaked out, Dean. Don't trust me?"  
  
"Somehow, that's the most bizarre question I've gotten in a while."  
  
Baby pulls Dean closer still, keeping eye contact.  
  
It's calculated, the way Baby slips Dean's hand under his own cotton mix shirt, leading Dean's fingers to something flat and smooth underneath Baby's skin. It's stuck between Baby's ribs.  
  
"Feel it?" Baby asks, knowing Dean does by how the confusion melts off his face, the twitch of his fingers like he wants to pull them back. Baby let's go of Dean's hand, but beyond the instinctual twitch, Dean keeps his hand still. Palm against the curve of Baby's ribs. He keeps forgetting how warm Baby is. Warmer than the average human, like the particles have to work harder to stay together.  
  
Cas is like this, too.  
  
Dean's fingers trace the outline of the small plate. He looks down to where his wrist has bunched up the fabric of Baby's shirt, where his hand is hidden. "What is it?" Dean asks, even though he already knows, somehow.  
  
"The army man Sam put in the ashtray when he was a kid," Baby says. Wrapping his fingers around Dean's wrist, he moves Dean's hand higher, across his chest to a spot a bit to the side, underneath his armpit. Dean feels the raised, smooth skin of scar tissue. "That's where you and Sam carved your initials."  
  
Dean meets Baby's eyes again. He removes his hand from Baby's skin, rubs the same hand across his own mouth and chin. "Let me guess: the Legos are rattling around in your lungs?"  
  
Baby actually grins. It's big, and bright, and so unlike anyone Dean's ever known. This is _all_ Baby.  
  
"So you're just covered in all this shit that's, well, inside you, I guess? On you?"  
  
"That's usually how it goes, right?"  
  
Dean lowers himself back onto the bed. He scoffs a laugh. "You're really into this whole... existential shtick, huh?"  
  
"You're the one who keeps asking all the questions," Baby counters. "I don't know why it's these things in particular. Maybe they mean something to you. Maybe they mean something to me. Maybe that's more or less the same thing: same song, different verse."  
  
"That's a lot of maybes."  
  
Dean runs a thumb over the lip of the bottle. He's had a lot of cheap liquor in his life, but this shit tastes like actual paint thinner. Hell, it might even _be_ paint thinner, considering the nondescript design. Or it could be moonshine. It's local in any case. That probably says it all.  
  
Maybe if he actually gets drunk—drunk enough—none of this will matter. He takes a long swig. The burn isn't cleansing.  
  
It's a habit, now, a quirk, the way Baby pushes up his sleeves to his elbows. Dean eyes the hole in the shoulder seam of Baby's shirt. Let's his eyes slide down to the tattoo. There's a fading bruise at the crook of Baby's elbow, like he's had blood drawn. Taking another long swig of paint thinner, Dean closes his eyes against the burn this time.  
  
There's the minute scrape of a chair, and Dean expects Baby to have sat down—a one-man show of drowning your sorrows for a one-time audience only—but instead, Dean feels Baby's hands on his thighs. Resting there, on top of the age-softened denim. Baby's thumbs point downward, toward the inseam, fingers comfortably splayed, and Dean's acutely aware of it, focusing on Baby's hands.  
  
He does have nice hands. Long fingers, slightly gnarly. Skin a little darker around the cuticles, like he's been handling oil-stained things. There's hair crawling down his wrist and onto the back of his hand, a trail disappearing, giving way to thick, visible veins. If Dean doesn't acknowledge anything else but this, if he drinks fast enough—  
  
Baby sits crouched in front of him. His expression is one of disappointment, of being pissed off, and heartbroken, all at once. Dean doesn't want anybody looking at him like this. Not Baby. Not Sam. Not Cas. No-one.  
  
There's a lightning flash memory of Mom. When Dean was small, when he was so alive; a time when he'd done something wrong, something he can no longer remember, but considering all the stupid things he's done since, he can take his pick.  
  
She'd put her hand on his cheek, run her fingers through his hair with a sigh, like she was saying, 'what are we going to do about you'. A little angry, and a little disappointed, and loving him anyway, forgiving him. She'd kissed his forehead, left him to think about what he'd done.  
  
"I'm getting some air," Dean says abruptly. He uses more force than necessary to remove himself from the bed, from Baby.  
  
Baby remains crouched in front of the bed when Dean leaves. His hands are behind his neck, head bowed.  
  
Dean doesn't have a destination in mind, just takes his soon-to-be empty bottle of paint thinner for a walk into the woods.  
  
He doesn't get mauled or fall into the ravine. No, he stumbles back into bed before the night is out, unscathed. Luck is always gifted those who don't deserve it.  
  
  
**10.5**  
Stiles doesn't die.  
  
Really, the problem turns out not to be luring the omega to them. Or even trapping him inside a circle of mountain ash. The problem is the fact they can't dose the omega up with wolfsbane; even disregarding the limited effect wolfsbane appears to have, Stiles doesn't want anything in the blood that could affect the spell. If his own ass wasn't on the line, maybe he'd be willing to chance it. But it is, so he isn't.  
  
They'd gone through all of this the day before. Derek had been the one to come up with the plan to incapacitate the omega without killing him—at least not right away—and even in theory it sounded insane. Watching it fold out in practice?  
  
Like so many other things, this'll be one that'll figure in Stiles's nightmares for years.  
  
Derek gets the metal pole from the car. One end has been sawed off at an angle, making it sharp, like the end of an old-fashioned needle.  
  
Being an alpha and therefore stronger than the rest, Scott helps Derek distract the omega. The look on Derek's face as he drives the metal pole through the omega's back, careful not to hit the heart, is another thing that will figure in Stiles's nightmares for years to come.  
  
When they'd arrived in the clearing, Dean had asked how Derek could be so damn sure this was going to work.  
  
"Because it worked on me," was Derek's answer, and he left it at that. Stiles is going to have to get some fucking explanation on _that_ if they survive this, that’s for sure.  
  
But it turns out Derek's right: it does work. The omega remains alive, if not in excruciating pain, and Derek manages to get a good amount of the omega's blood in the Tupperware container Stiles hands him.  
  
"Does this feel a little too... easy?" Dean asks, keeping a speculative eye on the omega literally staked to the ground.  
  
Stiles doesn't feel like answering because: on the one hand, yes, it _does_ feel too easy. But on the other... What do desperate people do? What do overconfident people do? And which one leads to the worst likely outcome? Because one of them is going to turn out to be the reason this all feels too easy.  
  
Desperation or hubris. Worst comes to worst? A little bit of both, and a good ol' fashioned dollop of crazy-brains.  
  
Stiles pours the omega's blood into the Tupperware bowl, adding as much of his own blood as the prick in his thumb allows. The quantity isn't the important part; it's the sacrifice itself. You give a little to gain a little.  
  
He swills the blood around in the bowl, mixing it. With his fingers, he marks the pulse points of each his wrists with the blood, before coating a pendulum with the remainder.  
  
Stiles moves the map so it spreads out over the hood of the Winchester's rental, careful not to stain it with his fingers, and (inwardly) says a brief prayer to God. Stiles doubts the witch is powerful enough to counter a locating spell like this one, but if they are... the marks on Stiles's wrists will be more than symbolic sacrifices.  
  
There's the collective stutter of everyones heart as he begins to recite the spell, the pendulum swinging willy-nilly. The moment of judgement.  
  
When the pendulum takes on its own momentum, Stiles breathes out a silent _sweet fucking Jesus_. The pendulum starts to draw itself to a specific spot. It wavers, then hits the map with a dull thunk.  
  
"I guess we know the witch isn't _that_ powerful," Stiles says, trying to hide the fact his hands are shaking. Sam and Dean share a look.  
  
"This isn't so far from my grandmother's cabin," Lydia says.  
  
"Close enough to the Preserve, though," Derek adds, circling it out the border with his finger.  
  
"They're gonna know we're coming," Stiles says.  
  
The omega is trying in vain to remove the metal pole, hands and claws slick with blood. He's resorted to clawing at himself, alternating between high, disturbing keens and low, primal growls. There's nothing left of the human he'd once been. Stiles knows this. The omega's too far gone, for too long, for any chance of reversal to take place; even if he hadn't killed a bunch of people.  
  
"They're definitely gonna know we're coming once the connections severed," Stiles adds after a beat. He turns halfway to Dean. Meets his gaze. Stiles rubs, absently, at the drying blood on his wrists. It flakes off onto the ground.  
  
Even an omega werewolf tethered to a witch can't survive a gunshot to the head. Let alone a wolfsbane bullet, crafted from Stiles's own personal stash of wolfsbane.  
  
The moment Sam breaks the mountain ash circle, the shot rings out.  
  
  
**11.0**  
It’s funny how fast you can dig a six-foot deep grave when there’s more than two of you doing all the digging. And the added labor having supernatural strength helps, too. They can’t just leave the body there to be discovered. For a number of reasons; the most obvious one being that an impaled body would probably attract the attention of more than just the local police.  
  
Once the body (and metal pole) are deep down under, they all head back to the cars.  
  
“Still don’t trust me?” Stiles says when Dean gestures him back to the rental. Stiles gets into the car easily enough, as do Lydia and Boyd. Sam goes with Scott, Isaac, Erica, and Derek.  
  
Sam and Dean had agreed on it without much need to actually hash it out. All things considered? They trusted these kids about as much as they were ever going to. This didn't mean separating the two strongest links in the chain for the twenty minute drive _wasn’t_ a good idea. Maybe not _necessary_ , but better safe than sorry.  
  
"What's the deal with blood magic, exactly?" Dean asks once they're on the road, following Derek's car.  
  
"So you're not a walking encyclopaedia of all that goes bump in the night? I guess it's not common knowledge. It's not that widely practiced, especially not by beginners. I'm more intermediate than beginner, but Deaton doesn't count blood magic 'because, Stiles, it's a gateway magic'," Stiles says with mock sageness. He makes a face.  
  
"The thing with blood magic is it requires less skill and less innate magic, at least the smaller, simpler spells do, because the sacrifice is greater. You always gotta sacrifice a bit of yourself, no matter what, for the spell to work. And if you make a bad judgement call, if your 'opponent' or whatever is protected by similar magic, blood magic but stronger than yours, then you're fucked. It's kinda like a rebound; you can get seriously injured, or more likely, you'll die," Stiles says, shifting a little in his seat. He pulls his knee up to the door handle, resting his arm on it.  
  
Dean notices, in the rear view mirror, Lydia looking at Stiles for a moment. She returns to her books when Stiles says, "Now it's your turn to share. What exactly is the deal with you and Trench Coat?"  
  
Dean can practically hear the capitalization. "Trench Coat?"  
  
"Castiel, right? Cas. I skimmed through those _Supernatural_ books. Not difficult to put two and two together, despite the lack of a family name. You think you're the only ones who do research?" Stiles snorts when Dean casts a disgruntled look his way. "I only skimmed the last one at first, wasn't gonna check out the rest, but then I got curious."  
  
"Why would I tell you anything about that when you've already read it?" Dean replies.  
  
"I don't know. Why wouldn't you?"  
  
"'Cause it's none of your damn business seems like a good enough reason."  
  
Stiles shrugs. "I'm just saying. Whoever's ghost writing your story is either into some serious queerbaiting, which is kinda bizarre and also probably a defamation of character or something, or—" Stiles spreads his hands. “—there's something going on with you and _Touched by an Angel_. _Have_ you been touched by an angel, Dean?"  
  
"Are you always this fucking annoying?" Dean asks. Judging by the look on Stiles’s face, he's holding back quite a lot.  
  
"You have no idea, buddy. Is it the gay thing? Because newsflash, bisexuality. Or is it the interspecies thing? Is it the trench coat? 'Cause that thing gets mentioned _a lot_.”  
  
"Why do you care so much?"  
  
"For many a great reason. The most obvious being, when I start picking at something I gotta pick at it until I get to the bottom of it, even if it kills me. Both literally _and_ figuratively. The second most obvious thing being, I practically spend all my time with living, breathing lie detectors. You think they actually believe Baby's your long lost cousin or whatever?  
  
"They don't. They also don't question it 'cause Scott's the one who said it, and I backed him up, so that works out. And Baby's not exactly threatening, so. Erica's made it very clear you two—'Dean and his useless hunter boyfriend’—have got some unresolved sexual tension coming out of every orifice, so I'm guessing it's the gay thing, and not the 'isn't actually human' thing. Though I'd kinda get it if it _is_ the trench coat fetish."  
  
"Pick all you want, kid. This'll be the on that kills you."  
  
"Is that a threat or a statement?" Stiles asks, finally shifting his gaze from Dean to the road. They're slowing down. They're on the drive leading to Lydia's grandmother's cabin.  
  
Stiles feels momentarily dizzy, like the world is pulled out from underneath him.  
  
“It’s an observation," Dean offers.  
  
-  
  
When Sam had pulled up (hacked into) the real estate agent's file in order to verify the address, there was the usual unflattering blur of a photo on the scanned driver's license.  
  
The witch's name, as it turned out, is Amanda McAllister. Female. Thirty-three years of age, blue eyes with ash blonde hair, 5’’2 weighing in at 90lb. An organ donor.  
  
The name's likely fake—there are no hits matching her appearance—but the driver's license itself looks legit. Which doesn't mean much.  
  
"I take it we're not gonna be stealth dropping this witch," Dean says as he unloads the iron chain from the car, just in case. Stiles eyes it.  
  
"Nope, she knows we're coming. I don't think you're gonna get very far with those chains. Unless you've got a really awesome lasso technique or something," Stiles says.  
  
"He has a point," Sam agrees, coming up next to Lydia. "And it's not like we've got time to bury it."  
  
"Or you could just leave it at the front door. That way she can't cross there, at least," Lydia adds.  
  
The walk to the house takes less than twenty minutes. They walk in silence, except the occasional quiet remark, most of which come from Stiles.  
  
When they're only a handful of feet away from the house, Isaac is the one to speak up. "Why isn't she attacking us?" He glares up at the second floor windows. There's no movement. A few lights are on.  
  
There's plenty of daylight to go.  
  
Dean sees Stiles pausing for a second, centring himself. Suddenly, he staggers, like he's been hit by a tidal wave. Scott puts a hand on his arm.  
  
"She already is," Stiles says. "She's been working me over since this morning. I wasn't sure," Stiles adds, before anyone can say anything.  
  
"Can you still do this?" Dean asks.  
  
Stiles nods, decisive.  
  
The house is quiet when they enter it. Not eerily so, but in a _nobody's home right now_ kind of way; like the euphemism people use when others aren't 'all there'. Could a house be catatonic, in its own inanimate way?  
  
It's cluttered in a way that suggests a moderately managed hoarding habit. Dean wonders if this is some kind of requirement for witches, at least the whackier ones, or the non-suburban, non-soccer mom types. The house isn't unclean, though, simply cluttered with things, untidy; worn down items, things clearly bought second hand, good will.  
  
"It's confusing," Isaac says under his breath, scrunching up his face. "Too many distinct scents."  
  
As planned, Scott, Lydia, Dean and Sam go upstairs with Stiles. The rest stay downstairs, holding down the perimeter, making sure there are no surprises to be had, working as back-up if shit hits the fan.  
  
It's not comforting, but what can you do.  
  
The stairs creak. Of course they do. And the hallway beyond it is long, with many doors. It's too perfect a set-up. Stiles and Scott take up the front, Sam behind them, Lydia behind Sam with Dean taking up the rear. It's not dark, but there are no windows here, thanks to the rooms along the hallway, and none of the lights are on. Which makes it all the more ominous and cliche, the single door standing ajar at the end, a strip of bright light coming through the crack.  
  
The blurry photo on the driver's license does not do Amanda McAllister justice. That is the first thing Dean thinks when he sees her in the flesh. She might be an evil, murdering witch-bitch, but there's no way around it.  
  
She stands in the middle of the large, empty room. She's got the wholesome good looks of someone who's spent their entire life on a farm, eating nothing but fresh, homegrown produce, and milk straight from the cow's teat. She's dressed for a day at the office; black pencil skirt, pale blue blouse unbuttoned at the collar. Except her feet, which are bare and dirty.  
  
It's unnerving.  
  
She only has eyes for Stiles, though. It's like the murderous werewolves flanking him, and the two gun-toting brothers she's more than likely heard of, don't faze her at all. Like they're not _there_ at all.  
  
She speaks, her lips move, but they can't hear her. She smiles.  
  
“ _Fuck_ ," Stiles says under his breath, both of his hands trembling slightly. He steps inside, and for a moment the looks on both Lydia and Scott's faces are ones of utter disbelief and panic. But the door doesn't shut in their faces, and Amanda doesn't move any closer, doesn't move at all.  
  
The rest of them take a breath, and step across the threshold, too.  
  
When she bears her teeth in a smug smile, her wholesome beauty is distorted. It's not a glamor, Dean's familiar enough with those to spot one, but it's _something_. It makes him uncomfortable. The more he looks, the more he feels like he's caught her undone.  
  
There's a smear of blood on her light blue blouse, close to the heart, which he hadn't noticed earlier. The shirt is buttoned wrong, too. Dean's gaze moves to her clenched fist, elevated slightly from her side. It's dripping blood onto the wood panels. Dean aims his gun at her heart. She's practically made it a target.  
  
That's the only great thing about witches: when it comes down to it, they're only human.  
  
"Don't even think about it, honey," Amanda finally says, her glittering eyes snapping to Dean. "You think I wouldn't have some insurance?" Her gaze drops to the floor, then slides back to Stiles.  
  
Stiles looks, for a split second, defeated. Not surprised, or worried. But like he already knew, and his suspicions were just confirmed.  
  
All Dean can see is a white circle painted on the floor, big enough to touch almost all four walls. It doesn't seem special, but Stiles's tensing shoulders tell a different story. Dean should know not to underestimate simple measures; he's been saved by fucking table salt more times than he can count.  
  
"It's rebounds," Stiles says, staggering a little. "Anything we do to her, rebounds. Even if we were outside it," Stiles adds when Dean is about to ask just that, 'why the fuck did we enter it then?' "It wouldn't rebound, but it'd be like shooting water."  
  
"What do you want?" Scott takes a step forward, partially obscuring Stiles.  
  
"For you kids to leave me be," Amanda says. Like she's being reasonable.  
  
"We're not Mystery Inc, _sweetheart_ ,” Lydia retorts.  
  
"You actually think we're going to let you go?" Stiles puts a hand on Scott, urging him to move without being able to put much force behind it. Scott shifts, reluctantly.  
  
"Of course I don't, silly goose," Amanda replies. There's laughter in her voice, tinkling, like mangled bells. Lines start to form along her forehead, crow's feet at her eyes. The furrows of a several decade long smoking habit show up around her lips when she purses them. "I know there's no way out of this, but through."  
  
"Then why are you doing this?" Stiles gestures at the circle, at Amanda herself.  
  
"Because misery loves company," Amanda replies, her pursed lips becoming a grimace. Stiles suddenly buckles to his knees. "And you killed Fido. Can't let that stand, can I?"  
  
Dean didn't think werewolves growling would ever have much of an effect on him, outside of the instant there-and-gone-again _danger, danger!_ ; but the growl coming from Scott when Amanda forces Stiles to his knees? Dean's bowels loosen a little.  
  
The low, strained noise emitting from Stiles has an even more profound effect on Dean. It hits all the buttons telling Dean to drop the bitch _now_. Each of them are thinking it; yet none of them can do a single fucking thing.  
  
They all stare helplessly at Stiles, even though they should be watching Amanda. Find a chink in her armor, a weakness, a misstep. Anything.  
  
She's growing paler, more drawn; Stiles is, too, and the noises are now pure, unadulterated anguish. Like she's breaking him down, molecule by molecule.  
  
"Are we just gonna let him die? Is that the big plan?" Dean grouses at Scott. Dean's this close to cocking the hammer on his gun and putting one between the bitch's eyes. It might kill him in the process, but he's not gonna stand here and let her torture this kid to death.  
  
Just as Scott is about to respond, Stiles silences him by grappling for Scott's hand. Amanda's focus returns to Dean. Stiles is breathing like he's run a marathon thrice over.  
  
"I can do this faster. I can rip his spark clean out of him," Amanda says, her eyes roving over Dean, Scott, Lydia.  
  
"You'll die," Stiles croaks.  
  
"Yes, but it'll be worth it. You'll die, too. Slower, differently, sure, but you can't go back: I know you can't, you can't give up now you've tasted it. You've had it in you your whole life, you think you can just have it taken away from you and live?" Amanda says, her voice straining. She walks closer to where Stiles is still hunched over. He's still holding onto Scott who looks torn between bodily protecting Stiles and doing some ripping of his own.  
  
A few steps away, she stops, not the least bit worried about the alpha right by her feet. There's a calm coming over her as she watches them. Stiles undoubtedly dying, and Scott unable to protect him. Lydia with tears in her eyes, and fury like she could open Hell itself, and throw the witch straight into the maw of a Hellhound.  
  
Scott and Lydia exchange a look not meant for Dean to understand. But it's clear they know what Amanda's talking about, what this spark is. To Dean, it sounds like having your soul ripped out; or at the very least a part of it, leaving you a little less than what you used to be. It's not something he'd wish on anyone.  
  
Stiles lifts his head an inch. Dean barely catches the movement of Stiles's lips, and none of the words they form. Scott swiftly removes his hand from Stiles's. He grabs onto Stiles's right wrist instead, shoving the fabric away so skin touches skin. It's not tendrils of black. It's not anything for a moment. Then, then it's _everything_.  
  
Scott's eyes bleed into red, the shift taking over his face. His claws grow out and pinch into the soft skin of Stiles's wrist. There's trickles of blood running down Stiles's arms, Scott's fingers.  
  
A strange pressure starts to build in Dean's eardrums, like he's being submerged deep under water. Yet he can still hear the audible snap of bone, the visceral impression it leaves. Amanda's scream comes a second later, the bloodied claw dropping from her now unclenched hand as she cradles her arm to her chest. Her left wrist is broken. As is Stiles's, a mirror of Amanda’s, but he's no longer making any noises. Only breathing rapidly, close to hyperventilating.  
  
Dean hadn't been conscious of it when they'd entered the room, but as the magic shifts, the pure _energy_ of it rebalances; he can practically feel it against his skin. Like static electricity. The pressure in his ears starts to abate again.  
  
Lydia falls to her knees beside Stiles, grabbing Stiles's free hand, the one not bandaged, the one with the broken wrist. She laces her manicured fingers with Stiles’s, ignores his pain, and closes her eyes. Her face goes eerily blank. For a moment, Dean really thinks the gates to something _will_ open, devouring the witch whole.  
  
There are still no black tendrils going up Scott's arms. Stiles's face is distorted beyond pain, but somehow he's straightening up, and Dean has _no fucking idea what's going on_.  
  
"Break the circle!" Stiles yells.  
  
Dean does the only thing he can think of: he looses three shots, hoping no-one’s standing underneath them downstairs, effectively splintering the wood. A gap is made in the white line. It works for Devil's Traps, hopefully it works for this, too.  
  
Lydia sways slightly on her knees. Stiles's grip on her tightens even though he can barely keep himself vertical, can barely move his fingers without passing out.  
  
Stiles stares straight at Amanda. She's still cradling her wrist to her chest.  
  
As Stiles's breathing slows, hers speeds up. She backs away, stumbles over her own feet, almost goes to her knees once, twice, until she's practically backed herself into a corner. Stiles keeps staring at her; she stares back at him.  
  
She looks older. Not by a lot, maybe a decade. Her skin color isn't as even, as flawless; her eyes are duller, her hair, too.  
  
Stiles looks away. He lets go and falls into Scott's chest. Finally, _finally_ there's black tendrils running up Scott's arms. Lydia's still holding onto Stiles's hand. Her green eyes slowly fall out of their thousand-yard stare.  
  
In his periphery, Dean can see Amanda get to her hands and knees, attempting to use the walls as leverage.  
  
Dean puts a bullet between her eyes. He doesn't even hesitate. The moment Amanda's body hits the floor, Lydia lets loose a scream unlike anything Dean's ever heard.  
  
The wicked witch is dead.  
  
-  
  
Sam managed to get caught up in a booby trap. Dean is almost kind of impressed.  
  
"How the hell did you even—" Dean starts.  
  
“Just—don't," Sam says, still holding several reams of tissue paper to his forehead. It's already bled through.  
  
Dean texts Baby, telling him they're all okay, aside from some minor scratches and bruises.  
  
It's at Lydia and Stiles's behest Dean and Sam don't head back to their motel right away. As Lydia had put it, "It might get infected," and when Sam had tried to argue that all he needed was to get it stitched up, she'd shaken her head and put her eyes in him. "A witch set that booby trap. Trust me, it might get infected."  
  
Which is how they end up at an animal clinic.  
  
But before that, Lydia and Erica caught a ride with Dean and Sam, and Erica explained what the rest of them had found while Dean and co had almost gotten kiboshed by the witch.  
  
"Whenever you find a freezer full of human organs," Erica said, buckling her belt. "You know it's either going to be about staying young or staying pretty past your expiration date. Or both, I guess."  
  
It was anti-climatic, to say the least. But it made sense. It allowed the witch to remove the organs without suspicion. Aside from giving her added power, the omega worked as her murder weapon, patsy, and cover-up all in one.  
  
"People are fucked up," Stiles agreed, as they all shuffled into the closed clinic.  
  
Couldn't argue with that.  
  
Within five seconds, Dean decides he doesn't like Deaton much. He can't say the feeling is mutual, 'cause the vet's pretty much unreadable. But Dean doesn't like anyone who hoards information and then only shares it selectively. He also seems _proud_ of Stiles’s broken wrist.  
  
"It seems to be a very clean break, Stiles. We'll have to do an X-ray, but I'm reasonably certain there's nothing to worry about," Deaton says.  
  
Stiles looks proud _and_ smug. "So I don't gotta go to the hospital, right? You can set it and patch me up, right?"  
  
Sam’s in the clear, too. Deaton cleans and sews up the wound, smears something on it that definitely isn't medicinal by normal standards, and says it'll heal up fine.  
  
"Dean, could I talk for you a minute?" Stiles says when Deaton finally tells the rest of them to head out into the waiting room—or better yet, head home—so he can get a proper look at Stiles's wrist, get it cast.  
  
"Sure," Dean says, eyebrow slightly raised. Sam hesitates for a second, but heads into the waiting room with the rest. Derek and Scott don't even glance at Stiles, which Dean finds a little alarming. Deaton doesn't leave the room, but busies himself with something a few feet away.  
  
Stiles shifts slightly on the examination table, so he can dig something out of his front pocket. His arm has been put in a makeshift sling, but his other hand is still bandaged up from the incident with the glass vial. It's a wonder the kid has even reached eighteen, Dean thinks.  
  
"Here," Stiles says, holding out his hand. He drops two innocuous pendants onto Dean's palm. "They're protection charms. They won't protect you against everything under the sun or whatever, but they're better than hexbags. Easier to carry around, too. Just don’t get too cocky.”  
  
Dean looks down at them. He turns them over with a finger. They look like badly shaped runes. Small and silver, most likely real silver, too. He turns his gaze back to Stiles, who sits with his bandaged hand resting on his thigh, palm up. He looks dead tired.  
  
"Why didn't you give us these _before_ the showdown?"  
  
"You just don't know how to appreciate a nice gesture, do you?" Stiles says. There's no heat behind it, though.  
  
Dean's lips twitch slightly. "Thanks."  
  
"You're welcome," Stiles says. "And I'm sorry. About Baby."  
  
"Not much to be done about it," Dean says. He shrugs.  
  
Stiles looks at him for a long moment, then he nods.  
  
"I hope we never cross paths again," Dean says.  
  
“Ditto," Stiles agrees and grins.  
  
  
**12.0**  
In response to Dean's text about their continued survival, Baby sends an unicorn emoji.  
  
"What the hell is that even supposed to mean?" Dean asks the front windshield.  
  
"What're we gonna do about Baby?" Sam asks.  
  
It feels like the world swerves for a moment.  
  
"What d'you mean, 'what're we gonna do about Baby'?" Dean glances over, a little too long, having them halfway into the opposite lane for a moment. Good thing there's no oncoming traffic.  
  
Sam's expression is one of sympathy. Dean's not interested.  
  
"You said it yourself, Dean. We're stuck with human Baby, and we don't know for how long. We can't drag him around everywhere, he's not a hunter, he's not even human, really. And I doubt Bobby's gonna want to take him in," Sam reasons, and it _is_ reasonable, and Dean really, really doesn't give a shit.  
  
_They're not leaving Baby._  
  
"Maybe Cas could help," Sam adds after a moment's pause, his tone close to pandering. "Maybe he could undo it—"  
  
"No."  
  
“Dean—"  
  
“ _No_."  
  
The last thing he needs in the middle of this clusterfuck is having to deal with Cas, too. The fact this is all Dean's own doing, inadvertently or otherwise, is not something that slips his notice. Dean just opts to ignore it. Until it blows up in his face. Which it inevitably will. It's already starting, by the looks of it.  
  
"It's not a discussion," Dean says at length, like he can actually keep Sam from it if he drops into John, drops into Dad, just for a second. Like that's worked since they were kids. Sam thankfully takes the hint, though. The rest of the drive is had in silence. Uncomfortable, oppressive silence.  
  
-  
  
Baby's not in the motel room when they get back.  
  
Instead, Dean finds Baby standing just beyond the shallow halo of light offered by the single working lamp behind the motel. He's barefoot, there’s the paleness of his skin against the dark grass. He's wearing the same clothes he wore the first time they met, hands in the pockets of his jeans, back to the park bench.  
  
Dean leans against the table, watching Baby stare into the unknowable darkness of the woods.  
  
Baby turns eventually, twisting on his heel, taking a few steps forward so the light illuminates his face. It hits his features in a way that makes Dean think of Halloween TV specials for kids. Which is an unfortunate association, probably.  
  
"We're leaving tomorrow," Dean says, loosely crossing his arms over his chest. "Up and at 'em, crack of dawn."  
  
"So the witch is dead?"  
  
"We didn't drop a house on her, but I'm pretty sure, yeah."  
  
"Drop a house on her?" Baby asks, amused.  
  
"Say it ain't so! All the shit you've been watching, and you haven't watched _The Wizard of Oz_? Man. You're missing out," Dean says.  
  
"I, personally, find my pool of knowledge pretty impressive, all things taken into account," Baby counters, spreading his hands out to his side as he moves closer.  
  
Tilting his head back slightly in challenge, Dean says, "Dazzle me, Quizmaster."  
  
"Everyone has an unique tongue print, just like fingerprints. They scan the negative spaces on barcodes. There's 525,600 minutes in a year. There's a whale who's been calling out for a mate for more than two decades, but his call is so different no other whales respond to him." Baby stops to think, then adds, "Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words."  
  
"That's a mouthful."  
  
Baby's lips twitch. "Are you dazzled?"  
  
"Yeah, pointless factoids really get me going," Dean says. He braces his hands against the table.  
  
"You should appreciate my efforts more," Baby says. He cracks his bare toes against the soft grass. Presses the top of his toes against the ground; left foot, right foot, then left foot again. Crack, crack, crack.  
  
"You feel under-appreciated, huh?"  
  
Dean could push off from the table and walk around Baby to the edge of the woods. Let his toes cross the line, into some metaphorical No Man's Land.  
  
Because there's no ambiguity in the way Baby keeps Dean's gaze in lieu of a response. Holds it, calm as you please, even as he walks closer to Dean, on bare and undoubtedly cold feet.  
  
Baby leaves it open, though. The option to run away, to shut it down, shut it out. Opt for the woods, for No Man's Land, where all bets are neither off nor on, and you never have to make a choice about anything, ever again.  
  
Dean stands still, though his hands have loosened against the edge of the table. He observes. He has no fucking clue what he feels, only that he feels _something_.  
  
Somewhere, in a warded box (no doubt buried in the woods of this No Man's Land), are the things Dean refuses to admit to himself. All the things he refuses to face because they terrify him. They hurt him. They anger him. They make him feel helpless, and too full of hope, and possibility, and all he can't afford to keep. All of it, all at once.  
  
Dean recognizes it. Recognizing it has never been the problem; acknowledging it has.  
  
Absently, as always, Baby pushes up the sleeves of his dark gray shirt, the one with all the holes. Baby's close enough now Dean can almost feel the heat of him. Just a little too warm.  
  
There they stand, toe to toe.  
  
Dean moves. He can see without trying, the darkened rings of Baby's irises, circling in the bluest blue. The eyes that flit back and forth, like they're cataloging everything Dean is: a last minute chance for Dean to cop out.  
  
Calloused hands fit themselves against the side of Dean's neck. The scrape of skin against stubble is loud in his ears. Dean licks his lips. Baby's eyes flick down, the corners of his own lips twitching, and Dean's about to say something, maybe, but it gets lost against Baby's chapped warmth.  
  
It's a spark igniting right where sternum and ribcage meet.  
  
One hand finds Baby's hip, underneath the shirt; warm skin and hard bone. The other holds Baby's waist, bunches the cotton knit of the sweater. Dean pulls Baby's body closer, delighting in the wandering strokes of Baby's tongue against his lips.  
  
So when Baby tilts his head back, breaking the kiss, Dean follows without relief. There's panic, somewhere, sailing the currents, seconds away from free-fall, from catching fire. _What the fuck are you doing, Dean?_  
  
There's no answer, only Baby's hands, one still on his neck, the other against a shoulder blade, his body so close. Baby meets Dean's gaze again, searching, sincere. Whatever Baby finds, he responds to it with a fleeting tease of a smile, and when Dean leans in this time, Baby doesn't thwart him. Just closes his eyes and gets lost.  
  
Time grows loose and pliant.  
  
Dean's skin feels raw from Baby's stubble; he imagines Baby's suffering, too. It's a small price, really. Nobody's died this time around. No-one's at the brink of death. That seems like a first.  
  
A few lingering kisses heralds the end.  
  
Dean rests his forehead against Baby's, eyes closed and breathing uneven. He can deal with this. If he focuses on Baby's hands; the minor twitches of Baby's fingers, the fingertips nearly touching each other at the nape of Dean's neck.  
  
Opening his eyes, Dean moves his hand from Baby's waist to his forearm. Dean runs his thumb along the feather tattoo. He's wanted to touch it since the moment he first laid eyes on it.  
  
A few years back, they'd needed an angel's feather for a spell. Dean had dismissed the whole spell as bullshit because of it. Then Cas, dutiful as always, had handed over a feather, gray and white, speckled with jet black spots, like someone had dropped charcoal on a piece of silk. A single feather from his own wings.  
  
It'd been about the length of Dean's forearm, from middle-finger to elbow. It seemed, proportionally, short for a feather. But then Dean knew nothing about the anatomy of wings, least of all angel wings.  
  
They'd ended up not needing the spell. Dean had planned to douse the feather with holy oil and burn it, keep it from ending up in the wrong hands. He didn't mention any of this to Cas, so when Dean kept the feather instead... well.  
  
In a duffel bag rarely used, pressed up against the side of the Impala's trunk, under the false bottom, Dean stowed away Cas's feather.  
  
He'd wondered if Cas knew. If he had some sort of connection to it, still; as though each and every one were unique in a meaningful way. It didn't seem so far-fetched, considering how heavy-duty the spell turned out to be. Angels probably don't moult like birds.  
  
Until then, Dean hadn't thought angels had actual wings. Their true forms weren't something he could imagine as physical entities known to him, like the Chrysler building with a state-wide wingspan. So maybe the feather Cas had given him was like _this_ incarnation of Baby, the one Dean currently feels under his hands, warm and alive, and breathing.  
  
Real, sure, but not true to its form.  
  
Dean doesn't think about the feather much. Hasn't thought about it at all, recently; not until he saw it branded into Baby's skin. Just like he doesn't think about Jo's hunting knife, the one she'd inherited from her dad, mixed in with all the other weapons in the Impala's trunk.  
  
He doesn't think about it, except when he randomly comes across it, like a sore reminder he refuses to let go. Or the pictures of him and Sammy from when they were kids, still living in their childhood home with Mom, and Dad. The beautifully carved lighter with John's initials, a long ago gift from a young wife.  
  
"So it's goodbye to Beacon Hills tomorrow?" Baby asks, moving himself, almost carefully, an inch away from Dean.  
  
Dean hears the question differently. More like, 'so what do we do about me?'  
  
"I don't want to talk about it," Dean says. He lets Baby go, deliberates for a second, then sits back down on the table. He catches the flicker of something on Baby's face before he does. Dean doesn't expect he'll get away with this response twice in one night.  
  
But Baby doesn't say anything. They're both quiet for a while, Dean staring off into No Man's Land. Dean can handle this. He can handle this.  
  
The rustle of Baby's bare feet as he moves closer, not further away; he puts a hand on the side of Dean's neck. Dean wonders if this is another thing about Baby, another quirk.  
  
Baby kisses Dean's forehead, then walks off in the direction of the motel room. It feels like something falling through the cracks, into darkness, abrupt and inevitable.  
  
When you get right down to it, Dean is _the_ poster child for denial and self-loathing.  
  
  
**13.0**  
Leaving at the ass-crack of dawn falls through, but Dean finds he doesn't mind all that much. He gets a full night's sleep; no interruptions, no disturbing dreams. It is at the expense of waking up feeling like an eighty year old man with degenerative arthritis, as usual, but it’s not enough to dampen his spirits.  
  
It's still early enough for the birds to be singing, though, trying their very best to be a nuisance.  
  
He isn't sure if he can actually feel it, or if he only feels it because he _knows_ it's there: the undercurrent of magic intrinsically tied to this place. The potential force. How it twines itself in an embrace with nature, keeping it nourished, protected. Stiles had said something like that, magic being Nature, Nature being magic.  
  
Dean vaguely registers Sam getting dressed and leaving for one last jog, trying to be quiet about it but not really. Dean lies in bed for a while longer, drifting, thinking about how fucking _relieved_ he's gonna be when they're finally out of this town.  
  
When he finally opens his eyes, they land on Baby sitting on top of the small, round table, staring into the middle distance. He's fiddling with one of the charms Stiles had given Dean the day before.  
  
"When'd Sam head out?" Dean asks, eventually.  
  
Baby turns his head to him. He just looks at Dean, like there's a delay between what he hears and when it registers. "About half an hour ago,” Baby says, then adds, hesitant, “I told him to go for a run so you and I can finish our talk.”  
  
"What talk'd that be?"  
  
"Dean."  
  
“ _Baby_."  
  
"You can't ignore this, Dean," Baby says, putting the charm back down on the table, next to the other one.  
  
Dean grunts, gets into sitting. He levels Baby with a look. “I’m not ignoring anything. We’re done here, we’re leaving, what’s there to talk about?”  
  
"You could let me choose," Baby says.  
  
"What do you mean, 'let you choose'? Let you choose what?"  
  
Baby holds up his hands, the backs of them facing Dean. The dark tint, like deep-set oil stains, don't just frame the nail beds anymore; it goes down his fingers, past the first joint, almost to the second. Dean’s stomach lurches, his mind conjuring images of gangrene, of dying flesh.  
  
"The magic's slipping," Baby says, resigned. "It's been happening for days. It started off slow, but now it's like it's just—speeding up exponentially. I can feel it. I can _feel_ how I'm feeling less. Isn't that ironic?"  
  
“Okay, so we’ll talk to Stiles, we’ll—"  
  
"No, Dean." Baby lets his hands fall back into his lap. His gaze doesn't waver. "You can let me choose. Let this be my choice. Let me stay here." Immediately Dean is about to protest, already putting his feet on the floor, gripping the sheets in fists, but Baby cuts him off again. "I want to stay here. Just... walk into the woods, somewhere in the Preserve, and then, eventually, I'll be that car nobody knows how got there. A local legend. I've already talked to Stiles—he's already cleared it with Derek, and Scott."  
  
“When the fuck did you decide this? Why haven’t you breathed a single goddamn word about this until now? What’s your plan, you’re just gonna sit there in the fucking woods and rot?"  
  
"Rust," Baby amends, like it makes a fucking difference.  
  
"No fucking way." Dean gets to his feet, like he’s about to throw a fucking tantrum.  
  
"It's what I want."  
  
“Once you turn back, you won't know what 'want' is; you won't know what fucking anything is," Dean says, and he regrets it instantly, but Baby’s too fucking calm, and Dean feels like he has, once again, no control over what’s happening in his life. Like he exists only to watch train wreck after train wreck, knowing no matter how much he tries to keep it from happening, that train is going to derail, turn into a molten pile of warped metal and inevitable death.  
  
“Please,” Baby says.  
  
"I _helped_ Dad pick you, way before I was even an idea in anybody's mind—“  
  
"Isn't it time to move on? You beat the Devil, Dean. Literally. You and Sam. Curbed whatever cosmic shitstorm was heading your way for at least another century, maybe more."  
  
“This—this is all I know," Dean says, gesturing at nothing in particular, or everything all at once. The only two constants in his life.  
  
"I'm not saying let go of everything. What I’m saying is… let go of _this_ ,” Baby says, putting a hand on his own chest. "Go back to being just Sam and Dean, hunting monsters from state to state, saving people. Like you used to. And fucking _talk to Cas_ , Dean. Stop punishing yourself. Stop thinking you don't deserve things. Everything is going to end, at some point, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't hold onto it while you can."  
  
"For fuck's sake—“ Dean digs the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. He tilts his head back. “Is this your fucking Hallmark moment or something?”  
  
“You can deflect all you want, it doesn’t change anything. I know you don’t believe in happy endings," Baby says. "But this isn't a bad one, either. Please, just let me stay."  
  
For a long moment, Dean stands watching Baby. Takes in his calm, his resignation, his slumped shoulders, his still-too-bright blue eyes, his tattered clothes, and bristled face.  
  
"I keep losing people," Dean says, his voice low and quiet.  
  
"Technically, I'm not ‘people,’" Baby says, bad a joke. It doesn’t land. "Please don't make this harder than it has to be."  
  
Dean scoffs. He can feel a burning sensation start to build in his nose. He tries to focus on his anger, tapping into that bottomless pit where everything he can’t—won’t—feel gets abolished to.  
  
Baby unfurls his legs, a little stiffer, a little more mechanical, and it's laughable, that Dean thinks of it this way, suddenly. But this is what Baby does; unfurls his legs, slides off the table, walks up to Dean with his long, long strides.  
  
"I'm going to turn back," Baby says, forcing Dean to meet his gaze. "Even if Stiles could keep it from happening—I want to stay here. I'm done, Dean."  
  
"I don't have much of a choice, do I," Dean says. He tries to keep his voice neutral, detached.  
  
Baby shrugs. "You do, but then you'd be the one making that choice for me, while I can still make it myself.”  
  
"Mmm," Dean hums, a self-deprecating chuckle following suit. "The autonomy card. Touché.”  
  
Dean is tired of losing people. He's so fucking sick and tired of always losing people.  
  
Placing a hand on Baby’s cheek, Dean focuses on the sensation of his skin, his scruffiness; runs his fingers into Baby’s hair, down the curve of his ear, coming to rest at his neck. Dean can feel Baby's pulse against his palm. Slow, slow, slowing. "I'm tired of losing people," Dean says, his eyes unfocused on Baby's chin.  
  
Baby moves closer, putting his hands on Dean's waist. He rests his forehead against Dean's. Baby is waiting, praying maybe, for the verdict. Like he doesn't already know.  
  
It's a soft kiss. Lingering pecks, little goodbyes.  
  
Dean let's Baby go.  
  
  
**0.5**  
The thing about _happily ever after_ is that it's bullshit. Stiles likes to think he’s a cynic at heart, really, but he’s steeped in hidden romantics, a fact he’ll deny until the sun burns out.  
  
"Oh my god, yes, Derek, fine, shut up, I will fix it," Stiles says into his cellphone, practically pressing the mic into his lips so he's sure it really penetrates Derek's eardrums. "I'm hanging up now," Stiles add, not caring about Derek's reply. He turns the ringer off and shifts, for the hundredth time, the bag slung over his shoulder.  
  
Why did Baby have to walk so fucking far into the woods, anyway.  
  
It's a Friday, which is a good day, because it means Stiles doesn't have work tomorrow. It's also the eight year anniversary—give or take a few days—of Stiles breaking his own wrist, of the wicked witch getting 'ganked', and the Winchester's leaving the town of Beacon Hills, never to return.  
  
Stiles's wrist healed just fine—it _was_ a clean break, as expected—and his hand healed fine, too, though some of the deeper cuts did end up leaving scars, despite the stitches, and sometimes his wrist does get a little stiff. (“Is it gonna start raining, old man?” “Fuck you, Scott.”)  
  
As agreed upon, Baby had walked into the Preserve, and waited patiently for his demise. Stiles gave it nearly a week before he went out and fetched all the things left behind in the trunk of the Impala—it was a very, very strange experience, to say the least—and sent it all, priority mail (which he made the recipient pay), to the address Dean had left him with (a Bobby Singer, which didn't sound real while also sounding weirdly familiar).  
  
“Well, hello baby, fancy seeing you here," Stiles says, when he reaches the small clearing where the Impala has been sitting for the last eight years. Stiles puts down his bag, runs a hand along the car's flank, says, "Looking good.”  
  
Baby's a little rustier, a little worse for wear, but surprisingly well-kept for a car standing outside in all kinds of weather. Baby would be pleased to know he has, indeed, become a legend.  
  
Surprisingly enough, there hasn't been any vandalism occurring over the years. Or, well. Not in the regular sense, anyway.  
  
The summer of Baby’s first anniversary, Stiles had gone to the clearing on a whim, while he was visiting home from uni. The Impala looked the same, except baby's breath had started to grow all around the it, circling it in. Stiles had guffawed. It was so on the nose—and definitely not something known to grow around these parts—he couldn't do anything but guffaw. There was no magic left in the car (he checked), but somehow...  
  
Over the next couple of years, all kinds of flowers started cropping up. These were clearly deliberate, though. Somebody—several somebodies, probably—had poured rich soil into the trunk (good thing Stiles had painted over the Devil's trap), and planted daisies, of all things. Someone removed the engine, poured in soil that spilled out from underneath, and planted white gardenias. And it continued like this, until the entire car was filled with all kinds of flowers, all kinds of colors, sneaking their way into nooks and crannies, into the vents, curling around the steering wheel, taking over. Many of flowers shouldn't have been able to live together, wouldn't normally flower year after year, but did, anyway.  
  
So Baby is a bit of a legend.  
  
"In a surprising turn of events," Stiles says as he carefully cuts the stems of a handful of baby's breath, some blue geraniums. "Derek's sister, Cora, is pregnant with triplets, and is living with us for the duration of her pregnancy, and is actually going to murder us all in a fit of flatulent rage. She's also craving red, uncooked meat a lot, which is disgusting."  
  
He gathers the flowers into a bouquet and takes a few steps back. He ignores his phone vibrating in his pocket. The Impala's a strange sight. Even when you know what it used to be, how it got there. Stiles still feels guilty about it, sometimes. Late at night, when he can't sleep. But it is what it is.  
  
"Say cheese," Stiles says, and takes a picture of the Impala. He calls Derek back.  
  
It’s not the end, yet. But for now, it’s happy enough.  


* * *

I keep you in a flower vase  
With your fatalism and your crooked face  
With the daisies and the violet brocades  
And I keep me in a vacant lot  
In the ivy and forget-me-nots  
Hoping you will come and untangle me one of these days  
_Come and Find Me Now_ by Josh Ritter [♪](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtC8OKmrr5A)


End file.
